Rain Shadow
by Nitlon
Summary: In which the boy who hated everyone met the boy who didn't. AU, RS. Warning: 'noodle' used as a questionable insult in a foreign language.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I have discovered the most zen phrase in the world. I don't care what your problems are, just say this and everything falls into persective, ready? "Ex-president Bush." _Whoosh_. And everything's okay. "Ex-president Bush. _Ex-_president Bush." See? Calm. Happy. Ex-president Bush. Zen.

_Any_ways.

Obligatory Disclaimer: I own as many copyrights to Kingdom Hearts as I do working moral compasses.

Commence! (Badam-KUSH!)

* * *

Riku Tepes was probably not human.

At least, that was the conclusion almost everybody drew from him after initial introductions.

The thing about Riku Tepes, see, was that nobody wanted to be his friend, but everybody wanted his _approval_, the way cats always act more affectionate around people that clearly don't like them. And Riku Tepes didn't like _anybody_. It wasn't that he said anything mean or rolled his eyes, but every time somebody sat down next to him, he fixed them with this

_Stare._

His eyes were an unusual color, but that was to be expected, anyways. Blue-green wasn't really _unusual _on his particular archipelago, and that wasn't what struck the people who looked at them, really. Anybody can have teal eyes, but it took a special person to wear them the way Riku wore his eyes, like they were weapons, like he didn't _need_ x-ray vision to see right through you. And he always saw _right_ goddamn through you, too. A person could walk away from Riku Tepes feeling like their soul'd just been strip-searched.

The thing about Riku Tepes, see, was that when you shouted something at him like "Hold up, wait, let me explain, it wasn't like that!" he'd pause, turn around, and look at you expectantly, waiting for you to talk. He never reacted the way a person was supposed to, the way a guy who's just walked in on his girlfriend fooling around with come random guy isn't _supposed_ to hold up and let her explain herself to him because really, she didn't have anything to say. He's supposed to walk off in a huff and ignore any pleas to wait up.

Riku didn't.

People sought his approval, though, in spite of or because of it, because he made it so _obvious_ he didn't need or care about anyone.

Everyone harbored that secret fantasy that they'd catch the attention of the guy with the soul-stripping eyes, because it was so very nearly a high school cliche come true, that the secretive pretty boy was secretly pining after you and secretly writing poetry for you or secretly composing love songs for you, and the day you two got together the whole school would be in an uproar and everything and -

_Nope_.

The thing about acting like you don't care either way about anybody is that, usually, the only reason a person might do it is because he doesn't care either way about anybody and likes it that way.

That's what everybody told Sora when he transferred to their high school.

They said things like "Seriously, don't bother with Riku. I know that's what people usually say and then it turns out the loner's a really nice guy and everything, but we already had the resident cheerful dude try the whole 'just talk and see if he opens up' bit. He just glared at Zack and went back to listening to his iPod or whatever. Guy is such a prick."

But when someone claims that a door they've just tried is locked, their comrades can never help but say "Really?" and try the door themselves, just to see if it's really locked, even if it always is.

In this same vein of mind, Sora sat down next to Riku Tepes and grinned, kicking his backpack under his desk.

Riku didn't look up, or flinch, or start to purposefully ignore Sora. He just took down some notes on the board and listened to the teacher.

"So hey," Sora said to him casually.

Riku pulled a bit of whitish hair behind his ear, and began to doodle something in the margin of his notebook. It looked like he was organizing his homework for the day.

"You're Riku, right? Man, I'm so bad at names it's not even funny, but apparently we're the only two white dudes in the school with Japanese names."

If Sora thought this shared trait gave him an edge, he was sorely mistaken.

Riku glanced up at him briefly, the way he might look up to see what just fell after hearing a quiet _crash_ in the room, just to take stock of the noise and its lack of importance.

He saw a boy with a haystack of brown spikes for hair, and eyes a color he'd never seen before. Blue-green wasn't uncommon on the Destiny Islands, but eyes the color the sky should be...no, Riku hadn't seen those before.

After meeting Riku Tepes a person could assume he was the one with the problem. He seemed to just dislike people on principle, just because they had bothered to talk to him, just because they were _there_. A person could assume he made a habit of not liking anybody at all. Which wasn't true, really, at all. But Riku didn't believe in just talking to people because they were there, either. If he didn't find you interesting enough to talk to, he'd glare you away as easily as most people would say hello.

Riku just had standards, was all. He didn't have more standards than any other person would have about friendships, but they were in very different places.

"I'm Riku," he said in affirmation to Sora's probably-rhetorical question.

Sora grinned and nodded. From the way he was sitting on his chair, angled slightly towards Riku to talk to him, Riku could see that he was wearing a zip-up hoodie with some sort of complex picture on it and that his pants were well-loved.

He looked at the picture with mild curiosity, because it didn't appear to be a generic logo. He saw on one of the white sleeves what might have been the brand of the company: an acrobat of some sort, dressed entirely in red and yellow stripes - including his skin - with hair like vertical squid tentacles. The brand was grinning with his arms crossed, and underneath him it read _"Démon de rêve,"_ in curly, old-fashioned script.

Riku frowned. The actual picture on the shirt was a drawing of what might happen if you bred an elephant with a boar, a great surly beast, ridden by a faceless man with spiky red hair and tatoos underneath the spaces where his eyes would have been.

"So are you actually part Japanese, or did your parents just name you that?" Riku met Sora's eyes again, now mildly more curious.

Riku took high school French, and anyone who bought clothing from a company called _"Dream Demon"_ was Interesting Until Proven Normal.

But, in his mind, there was a fine line between acceptable curiosity and asking questions for the sake of asking questions, and Sora was walking on it.

"My mother is Japanese," he said, sounding clipped.

"Really? Cool. My grandfather on my mom's side was Japanese, but I don't really look it." He looked down at himself, his white and curious sweatshirt and all, and smiled. He looked back up at Riku. "I don't really look anything at all, huh?"

He didn't pretend not to hear him, but Riku didn't respond, quickly growing tired of this new possibility. He looked at the hoodie one last time, regaling it to the corner of his mind where he'd ask questions he didn't really care for the answers to, and turned back to his notes. He looked up to the latest slide on the overhead.

"You wanna know what it is?"

Not entirely surprised, Riku slid his gaze over to Sora disdainfully, preparing to frighten him off with a glare if necessary. Riku hated people who didn't know when they were being ignored.

That was one kind of person he hated.

"My sweatshirt, I mean," Sora explained, gesturing to it. "It's from_ Démon de rêve_, which is a pretty obscure clothing company, even in France." Riku gathered from Sora's perfect accent and his proceeding comment that he must have come from there before moving. Riku hadn't ever met a person from France before.

He found it didn't affect him too much, really.

"Do you wanna know?"

Riku stared at him, but he didn't turn his glare on full-power. It was a disinterested gaze. If Sora wasn't smart enough to pick up on the fact that it was as close to a yes as he was going to get, being so far teetering on the edge of talking for talking, he wasn't worth listening to.

Sora smiled. "The guy is riding on a Bob."

Riku's little glimmer of hope that maybe this person, at least, would be interesting, would have things to say, would have his head so far in the clouds he'd duck airplanes, died. 'Bob' was the name people gave things when they wanted to give something a funny name, the way people thought saying "I like cheese" was being random.

Riku also hated people like that.

"A Bob," he said, his voice completely flat. He started to turn away.

"Yeah. You know, all capital letters. It's an acronym. B-O-B," Sora smiled at him. "Beast Of Burden!" he said, punctuating the air with an index finger for each word.

Riku had turned back to his notebook and jotted down another bullet point, but he looked back up at Sora. For once, his eyes were just _there_. "Beast Of Burden?" he asked quietly.

"We-ell, I don't technically know that, because they never explain their designs, _tu sais_,_ très équivoque_ - hey, how do you say that in English? Is there a word for..." he trailed off quite abruptly, staring at a space about three inches to the left of Riku's nose. Sora shook his head, as if clearing it, and dove into his backpack for something, giving Riku a good look at the expanse of his back. This side of the sweatshirt was mostly plain, with the exception of a drawing of a chain, from which hung a pendant like a heart tacked onto the bottom of a cross that he thought he almost recognized.

Sora came back up with a notebook, frayed beyond recognition at the edges and half of the pages halfway ripped out along the perforations. It was bright green, and the cover said, in sloppy sharpie, "_Le Dictionnaire français-anglais de Sora_."

He looked up momentarily, notebook still open to a page filled with the sloppy, disjointed, half-cursive chicken scratch that Riku thought belonged to people unused to holding pencils. "Hey," Sora said, and Riku found himself staring at BOB-boy with an impassive stare, "uh, is there a word in English that means...something...that's kind of vague, that could have, you know, more than one meaning? Uh, I guess that's kind of hard to answer- "

"Ambiguous."

Sora blinked at him, as if questioning if he'd just been interrupted. As if questioning whether or not Riku had actually just bothered to offer up information for a question that he could have easily dropped with a slightly angrier stare. "Yeah! That sounds about right. A - am - I can never pronounce words like that. Keeps me from sounding like a native."

Riku didn't ask why Sora knew casual English slang like 'yeah', 'you know', 'wanna', and didn't know words like 'ambiguous'. Riku didn't really care all that much, because Sora was still _talking_.

"Ahmbugwuss...aw, that's not right. Ahm-boog-ewe-"

He rolled his eyes fiercely, leaning back in his chair and motioning for Sora to stop. "It's like..." he thought for a moment. "Am - big - you - us. Just those four words."

Sora screwed up his nose for a moment before trying. "Am...big...you...us. Am-big-you-us. Ambiguous. Was that right?"

"Yes."

"How do you spell it?"

Riku shook his head, grabbed Sora's notebook, and wrote it down for him it his neat, narrow handwriting.

At this point, however, the teacher had long caught their conversation. He'd been holding back yelling at them because Riku never even talked this much to anyone, and Sora was new, and all his teachers had been informed of the unfortunate circumstances under which he'd moved to the Destiny Islands. But it was getting out of hand, and the tacit, white-haired one was the first to notice the warning glare he sent them.

Riku looked at Sora with a sort of finishing glare, and Sora just mouthed 'thanks' and put his notebook away.

Sora didn't say anything to anybody for the rest of class.

In fact, Sora started to take down some notes, looking quite satisfied with the silence.

So Riku forgot about him, because a French kid with weird clothing didn't interest him all too much, and he looked at the other people in the classroom.

A person could have pointed out any given one and Riku could remember some time over the last three-or-whatever years that they'd approached him with some dumb question, or offered him a friendly smile in advisory, or sat next to him on the bus and tried to start a conversation. Maybe not that one group of nerds, over there, whispering to each other about the lesson. They'd always seemed content to learn. Riku wondered why nobody else saw the wisdom in that - it was halfway through junior year, they had a year and a half before the mass diaspora at the end of senior, the spread across the country and out of it to college, and even if you exchanged emails or phone numbers or _what-**ever**_, everyone knew you wouldn't really keep in touch. Parents always mentioned friends from college, that they'd met each other in college, that they'd been offered jobs in college, not high school.

Everyone kept acting like these years were going to last forever, and that they should still be making friends.

What a Goddamn _lonely_ person Riku Tepes was. He didn't even really have a right to be.

Riku looked at his biology teacher and nearly sneered. Dr. Zexion - that's what he made everyone call him, and nobody actually knew if it was his first name or his last name - was another kind of person that Riku hated. The kind that tried way too hard to be intellectual.

He'd say things like "Please regard the three-hundred-twenty-first page of your textbook whilst I write down the day's homework on the white board." There was no reason for him to talk like that, and it didn't make him sound smarter, not at all. Anybody could arrange their words to sound pretentious, but he didn't even sound like _that_, he sounded like he was trying to be pretentious without having a feel for how intellectual people spoke. A real intellectual let you know it without having to try, or use big words, it was just a _feel_ you got from some people that you might not be expecting to - that was one of the things Riku looked for in a person. Dr. Zexion didn't have it. He was smart, but he wasn't _smart_. He couldn't answer any questions that hadn't already been answered by someone else a long, long time ago.

Riku hated people like that.

He hated it even more that he did things like that sometimes.

But then the bell was ringing and everyone was leaving the classroom and shouting at each other about what period was next and who had what lunch and notebooks were being shoved into backpacks were being zipped and flung on shoulders were shrugging and leaving Riku and Sora in the room.

Sora looked mildly dazed, and Riku just figured that wasn't his problem, putting away his own things and heading for the hallway, then the stairs.

"Um, Riku?"

He stopped, wincing inwardly. Oh, _Sora_, you were so close to making it past the first round, of not getting eliminated from the white-haired wonder's radar, and now he was going to ask if they could eat lunch together, _wasn't_ he.

"Well, it's just," he said, jogging up to stand next to him. "I used to go to this tiny high school and you had like - well, it wasn't this big," he said, hastily cutting his story short after a warning glare from Riku, "And right now I'm three kinds of confused about how to get around here. So, um, how do I get to the lunchroom from here?"

Riku sighed. "Um, just go..." he thought the directions out in his head. _'Down the stairs, go to the third hall from the right, past the front doors, down another hall and take your second left then follow that hallway up the ramp and take a right and take the set of double doors on the right.'_

"Just...follow me," he said, with no little resentment tinging his offer. "I'm going there too."

"'Kay," Sora smiled at him like he'd just done him a huge favor. Riku just rolled his eyes and clopped down the stairs, with his new French parasite in tow.

The rest of the whole day was like that, too, of Sora sometimes asking two or three needless questions and falling completely silent, almost thoughtfully, _just_ enough to keep being interesting to him.

And then he'd throw Riku these curveballs of imagination that made no sense, and weren't genius or terribly observational. Sora didn't have anything hideously introspective to say, which was good; to Riku - knowing that in all likelihood, when you're seventeen, you're only rediscovering all the old depressing things about humanity - you shouldn't say anything sage unless you'd thought about it.

But at the end of school, there was this period of time when the buses were dropping off the middle school students, so everyone had about forty minutes to waste talking to teachers or each other or going to clubs. Riku just sat on the wall and waited the forty minutes for the his bus to come. He hated those useless forty minutes, and how his bus never showed up less than fifteen minutes after it was meant to. He hated how peoples' parents would pull up in the places reserved for the buses to pick up their precious little bumpkins a few minutes early, and then drove off immediately. But he'd started off listening to his mp3 player, and then -

"Hey, Riku? Does it rain often in the summer?"

"Hey, Riku? Are our schedules the same all year round?"

"Hey, Riku? Is there a word for _fée_ in English? I thought it was fairy, but apparently that means a homosexual person?"

Another kind of person Riku hated were the people who couldn't tell that you were listening to your iPod and not only _couldn't_ hear them, but _didn't want to_.

Riku just gritted his teeth, fighting back some sort of primeval growl of the Antisocial Pretty Boy, and pulled one earbud out.

"Fairy is just slang for a gay guy. The stereotype is that gay men all act like teenage girls or fashion divas or something, so..." With that second sentence, Riku calculated, he had officially broken his record for things said to one person, outside his family, in a day. Sora didn't know it, but if he had, he might have taken a little pride in the fact.

"Oh. I see." Sora screwed up his nose again. "That's silly." He stood up then, standing on the big brick wall that surrounded the school in the front, even though it was only about three and a half feet tall and didn't even go all the way around the front. He started to walk down it, towards Riku, who was leaning up against it looking disinterested again. Sora spread his arms out to the side, not like he was balancing, but like he expected wings to just grow out from his shoulders.

"Do you know what, Riku Tepes?"

Riku didn't say anything, but stared at him without anger.

"Tomorrow, I think I'll fly to school instead of walking."

It was things like _that_. How he'd just say things like that, completely deadpan with that tiny, unnoticeable almost-accent of someone who grew up speaking two languages and mostly using the other one, that always knocked Riku out. He found himself smirking a little, and he didn't try to hide it. He was getting stared at so honestly by those eyes-the-color-the-sky-oughtta-be, and Riku thought, _maybe this one'll really do it._

He didn't say that, but instead he asked Sora, "Yeah? You'll fly, huh?"

If Sora noticed how Riku'd finally said something with being asked a question, he didn't show it.

"Yup! Icarus did it, and let's face it, _quelle nouille_! So it should be a snap for me if I don't fly next to the sun."

Riku frowned, and looked at Sora with a little apprehension. " 'What a noodle'?" he asked dubiously.

"Yup," came the reply, and Sora looked content to leave it at that. "Hey Riku, wanna fly to school with me?"

He laughed and shook his head, not in a 'what a moron' way, but in a 'I haven't laughed in too long' way. "Fly to _school_...with you."

"Yeah, just drop by my house around seven fifteen," he grinned. Another car pulled up, one that looked vaguely like one of those smart-car things, or maybe just a hybrid - Riku never had known much about cars.

"I don't know," Riku said, smiling a little. "I've never been much of one for flying. Maybe I'll float to school and meet you there, Sora."

Sora jumped a little at hearing his name, his name called out in that low voice that seemed unused to social interaction, and couldn't help but feel a little happy. He started humming a tuneless tune for a couple seconds, before, "Oh! My ride's here! Glad she works her own hours."

Riku frowned, looking at the tiny hybrid-thing with slightly tinted windows, which appeared to be the only car in the lot that hadn't already picked up its cargo.

He could see a woman inside with hair of some light-ish shade, could have been anything from blonde to red to tan, and she was talking with someone on a cellphone. She looked upset about something. But then she glanced up and, seeing Sora, offered him a watery grin, waving him over. Sora waved back at her.

"See you tomorrow, then, 'kay Riku?" he laughed. "Maybe I'll land on the roof."

He jogged over to the car and got in, and he left Riku leaning up against the wall, one earbud dangling by his side and the other one blasting too loud in his other ear, tallying up the pros and cons of the ambiguous French kid with eyes the color the sky oughtta be.

Riku also kinda hated people who got picked up by their parents earlier than the buses.

At least, he thought he did.

* * *

A/N: Everyone knows what an overhead is, right? I hope that isn't/wasn't just a cultural thing in my area or something.

I feel like it's fair to warn: if I do continue this story, it may or may not turn vaguely shounen-ai (literally translated as 'boy love' in case nobody knows that), because I want to see if I _can_, really, and let's face, it there have never been more likely candidates for it than these guys.

You know, originally I made this story's Sora German, then Spanish, and finally settled on French. I figured he looks more French than he does German or Spanish, and he's obviously not Japanese (sorry). Plus I've never seen French!Sora in fanfic. It amuses me. As such, I now know how to say 'Dream Demon' in like four languages counting English. Um. If you have any questions ask and please don't kill me if I butchered any characters this is just an intro?

Also: you know how when you post a story it lets you pick two characters who are the focus of the story? Okay, I am sorely tempted to just write a story that somehow has the two main characters be 'Anti-Sora' and 'Riku Replica'. Seriously. They're options. THAT WOULD PROBABLY BE THE MOST CRACK PAIRING EVER. NOT THAT I WOULD PAIR THEM TOGETHER, but seriously. It would be. So funny. And awkward.

"Hey, so I'm a clone."

"I'm an antithesis."

"Let's be friends!"

"What? Aren't you blind?"

"Um."


	2. Sticks and Stones Can Break Your Bones

* * *

**But Words Can Fucking Kill You.**

* * *

"But as far as what soothes me, what inspires and moves me,  
honesty behooves me to tell you your hate doesn't move me.  
See, like the darkest of clouds my heart has a silver lining,  
which does not harken to the loudest whining,  
but beats and stirs and grows ever more  
when I learn of the things you're actually for."

- Taylor Mali, _Silver-Lined Heart_

_

* * *

_

Riku went to bed at eleven o'clock, and by eleven twenty he had kicked his sheets off his bed in a huff, because even in March it was too warm on the islands. He stood up, peeked outside his door, to see how awake the rest of the house was. He was the youngest in his family, and most of his brothers were in college, but one of them was home for some reason Riku'd forgotten - he might be up.

But the house was entirely that bluish nighttime color, and to Riku, it seemed like everything was drooping. The house was sleeping.

_Are you tired too, house? Can you sleep in all this heat?_

He sighed and plodded back into his room, pulling down the nightshirt that had been riding up his hips. With a flop, he landed back-first on his bed, staring at his blue ceiling with his blue eyes, and holding his hand in front of his face. His hand looked blue, too. He wondered if anybody would hear if he turned on some music.

Riku thought about this, but he decided there wasn't any music he wanted to listen to, anyways. He snorted. He didn't understand these bands that everyone loved so much. These people that moaned and groaned and complained about things, well, at least they were trying. But, at least on the Destiny Islands, what was becoming popular was music with vague lyrics and even vaguer titles, the kind of songs that fooled people into thinking they were deep and that the people listening to them were deep, too. But Riku knew that these artists, these jackasses who wouldn't know lyrical poetry if it slapped them in the face with a napkin, didn't know what they were talking about any more than the people listening to them understood them.

Riku thought it was pretty funny, in a sad kind of way. Everybody thought they were the only ones who didn't understand them, so pretended to anyway. And the musicians thought the same thing, so kept saying things that sounded smart, things about torn hearts and drowning in seas of loneliness and dead people, and hoping they'd be accepted by the other musicians. Riku knew that if just one of them was honest about the whole thing, everybody else would fess up and they'd start writing things that actually made _sense_.

He laughed out loud, hoping that nobody would hear him. _Yeah_, he thought. _It really is funny, if you're looking at it from the outside._

_

* * *

_He didn't know when he fell asleep, but when he looked around and saw a grungy city and a huge gap in the earth, he assumed he was dreaming.

Everything was brown, the musty sort of brown that colored the air and the streets and your thoughts and the half-pueblo things covered in graffiti, that Riku was separated from. They were all on the other side of this huge gap, see, that he was standing on the other side of. The space separated Riku and the city by a good ten meters, and when he turned around he saw one big, industrial building, lined with aluminum, and someone had painted it so that it looked the door he'd come out of was a mouth, someone had painted a giant mouth that Riku didn't want to get swallowed up by again, again.

Instead, he looked back to the huge crack in the earth with the smooth, sandstone walls stained with brown stains. He looked down into the huge sandstone crack in the earth with walls stained with brown stains. It went so far down, the bottom was swallowed up by smog or mist or whatever. It was wispy.

Leaning over the edge a bit, something in front of him _zoomed_ by, and it sounded like a car or an electric scooter. As soon as you noticed it, it was swelling rapidly, and as soon as you waited for it to get closest it was already zipping off in the other direction.

He scrambled to his feet, backing up against the mouth somebody had painted on an industrial building like it wanted to eat Riku up even though he'd just escaped the big industrial building.

And then there was another zooming sound, but it wasn't so much like a car and it wasn't so much like an electric scooter, but it was a smoother sound, like a clarinet.

And in came somebody, like he was surfing on the air or the smog or what-have-you, his feet balanced on a dictionary that was as big as it was open as it was red, just like his feet were red just like they were yellow just like the book was red, just like he was surfing on the book on the air towards Riku wearing only red and yellow stripes like that stupid circus performer on that stupid sweatshirt that he remembered.

And it _was_ the logo, the dream demon, the what-_ever_ it was called. But it was Sora too. Sora, in red and yellow stripes, surfing a red dictionary on the air towards Riku much slower than that first book-surfer. And he stopped in front of Riku and hovered.

All of him was covered in those stripes. His hair was pointing out in all directions, and his face was red and yellow, and only one strip around his eyes was Sora-skin with freckles and pink.

"Oh!" he said, sounding surprised and shifting his weight on his open book like he hadn't stopped in front of Riku on purpose. "It's _you_!"

"Yeah," he replied lamely.

"You're hovering, Riku! Riku, you're hovering!" Sora said.

"No," Riku told him, and dream-demon-Sora looked surprised for another second, then frowned. "Oh," he said again. He shifted his feet again and, quite suddenly, it seemed as though the spine of the book bent a bit underneath him and his foot slipped down with a sort of _krrssshhk_ noise as he looked absolutely horrified, scrambling for safety. Riku grabbed his hand and pulled him up again.

"Careful," he said. "Those are slippery."

"Oh, yeah," Sora agreed absentmindedly, staring at him with an intense glare like he was angry for being saved. Then he brightened noticeably.

"You wanna try?" he offered, holding his hand out this time.

Riku shook his head. "I can't," he said. "It's Tuesday," he said.

"Right," Sora said again, giggling. "I keep forgetting that." He laughed at his own silliness.

Behind him, a few more dream-demons zipped by on their own books. Dream-Sora looked thoughtful, and smiled.

"Riku?" he said, tilting a little closer, still flying on his book. Riku took another step towards the edge of his side of the gap, so that they were only a foot apart.

"Yup?" he asked, even though he hated people who used words like 'yup'.

And then Sora was leaning in towards him, and had his arms draped around his neck in a lazy sort of a way, in a way that could really easily be misinterpreted if you decided to misinterpret it, but Riku was mind-drunk on fog and dream and Sora's eyes and Tuesdays, so didn't care too much either way.

"Hey Riku?" Sora asked again. "Do you _like _me? _Tu m'aimes_, Ri-_ku_?" He looked down when he said it, sort of lazy and sort of shy. And still not looking at Riku, he bit his lip and shifted his hip, and pressed theirs together in a way that probably would be misinterpreted by anybody.

"I dunno," Riku told him.

"Don't you _like_ me?"

"I dunno," Riku told him.

"Hey, Riku?"

"Yeah, Sora?"

"Do you wanna touch me?"

He didn't mean it in a perverted way or in a sexual way, and that much was obvious even to Riku who was drunk on fog and dream and Tuesdays. He meant it in the same way a guy might say "Do you wanna know what the picture on my sweatshirt is?" just to see if you do, because it won't cost either of you anything and he kind of wants to tell you anyways.

Sora backed up a little and held out one striped hand, wiggling his long fingers that looked like they didn't have any joints, were just points.

Riku reached out and pressed his thumb to the pad of Sora's middle finger.

* * *

Then he woke up.

"Shit," he swore softly, wondering why all of his dreams were either of flying books or, less commonly, Disney villains. Like most people, he forgot his dreams by the time he'd eaten breakfast, and he wasn't one of those people who kept a dream journal or anything.

It was still blue in his room, but it was a lighter blue now, the kind that happened in Riku's room a few hours before the sun really decided it was daytime. Squinting his eyes, he looked at the alarm clock by his bed, which informed him he'd woken up about two hours before he needed to as a cold draft blew across his stomach.

And glancing down at himself, he noticed that not only had he shifted in his sleep, but he'd managed to halfway kick off his sleeping pants and had somehow unconsciously pulled his nightshirt most of the way up his abdomen, perhaps in a self-preservation-inspired attempt at cooling down.

He swore again, digging the corner of him palm into his eye, like pain might wake him up. All he succeeded in, however, was in apparently wiping loose a stray white eyelash.

"Che," he snorted. He kicked off his pants and stood up again, and his bed made that same non-sound-blue-sound that it made every time somebody sat on it, because it was a futon, not a mattress, and only used at night.

He looked out his window, at his neighborhood which was half pueblos or thatch-roofed houses and half normal, shingled things. He looked at his neighborhood and smiled, thinking how wonderful it was, to be up at four thirty in the morning staring out at a sleeping town and being the only one awake.

And then he laughed, which sounded like a bark, and turned back to his bed with his arms crossed, flopping on his back and thinking how absolutely _hateful_ it was to think that he was the only person up at this hour on an island with a population of tens of thousands. How self-centered. Riku just _hated _things like that.

He watched his blue ceiling getting lighter and lighter as the sun rose, and he thought about all of the things about people that he hated, that he was starting to hate more and more. He was a little disgusted with himself, for finding this many things wrong with humanity at five in the morning, half-dressed and delirious from exhaustion. Riku hated how people always talked about eyes, like they were more important than any other features. How someone's description was always 'blond hair, blue eyes' and never 'his upper lip is a little thinner than his lower' or 'his nose is small and pointed' or 'big ears' unless they were deformed. How people talked about eyes like they were windows, which they weren't, and how they were windows to the _soul_, which they didn't even know existed.

Around five thirty Riku Tepes gave up thinking all these horrible things and thought about his dream, instead, which he still remembered quite well. As if his dream-memories would disappear if he moved around too much, but having only walked around a bit and lay back down, it was only blurry around the edges.

_"I can't, it's Tuesday."_ Riku snorted at the endless stupidity of his own damn imagination. It felt good to call it that. His own _damn_ imagination. The words went together, in his mind, like gears of a watch.

_"Do you like me, Ri-ku?"_ Riku frowned.

_"Do you **like** me?"_

He thought about dream-Sora's behavior. Not only was it kind of _girly_ after the whole slipping thing, it was like he'd been...

_Sora pressed their hips together, lazy._

Well, something.

The more he thought about it, the more Riku realized that he had had as close as his mind would get to a sexual fantasy.

He wondered how much he should be worried that he'd had one about another boy. And he crossed his legs, tapping his foot in midair like he was trying to touch the ceiling. The almost-white-again ceiling.

And after a few minutes, once the vividness of the dream had faded and its intensity diminished severely, until he could no longer see the strip of skin around Sora's eyes or feel a finger on his thumb, he figured that his mind must have been so _relieved_ to have its owner not reject another human being that it was finally releasing any minor amount of sexual energy it'd had.

Riku wasn't too big on sex for a teenage boy, but he was glad to have figured that out. Because thinking on it, he didn't see anything attractive in Sora. He was a boy of average height, with a mildly nice face. He was skinny and he walked with a teenaged slouch, just like Riku did, and he didn't think himself too attractive. He wasn't a narcissist.

No, even if he looked at Sora as a sexless thing, as someone in whom gender didn't matter, Riku felt nothing but maybe a bit of platonic...non-dislike.

He realized, in his line of thought, that he sounded like he was in denial. That these were the things a person might say if they were trying with all their heart to not admit that they might be attracted to somebody of the same gender.

That's another thing Riku hated about people. Even if you did want to deny something, if the answer to your question was assumed, _any_ answer you gave meant what they were looking for. Because if you said 'yes', they were proud of you for being honest. And if you said 'no', you were in denial, automatically. And if the answer really was 'no', it didn't matter.

Because if Riku was completely, brutally, horribly honest with himself, he would kind of like to like somebody. But he didn't. What a goddamn lonely person Riku Tepes was.

* * *

Just to be fair, though, when he saw Sora getting dropped off by the same hybrid-owning guardian that'd picked him up yesterday, he tilted his head to the side and looked at the boy's bum while he got his backpack from the back seat.

Riku didn't know what to look for in somebody else's backside. But he felt nothing, in all honesty. He gave a little half-sneer to himself, not quite understanding this whole big deal about bums. It was probably another of those hateful things that nobody would like if it weren't for everyone else pretending to like them.

With a snort, he turned back to the school, and tried not to imagine a big mouth around the doors, trying to swallow him up.

He glanced at his watch. Neh, he had a good twenty minutes till class started (damn buses). He sat down at the wall and ignored the way the school looked more and more like a fat, hungry head, tried not to think of the students trickling in as clueless mice.

_Sheep is more like it._

He got a cheerful, smiling nod from Zack Fair, to which he didn't respond, and soon one of those full-arm waves from a girl he thought might have been named Kairi, the kind that made her look like she was frantically trying to pop bubbles five feet above her head.

He stared at Kairi, who calmed down a little and smiled wider before Riku just snorted and turned up the volume of his music player.

But he _felt_ the other kid come up behind him, with that same prickly-neck feeling he got whenever somebody was going to try their luck on the petrified Riku statue.

"Riku Tepes," Sora said, sitting down next to him on his wall with a thunk. "Why don't you have any friends?"

Riku frowned and pulled his eyebrows together, staring at Sora dubiously. "What?"

"I'm not saying you're the most fascinating person in the world, but you're not _boring_, and there are people with lots of friends who try way harder to be socially adept than how hard you'd have to try to get as many friends. So, fess up. Why no friends?"

He stared at the shorter boy, mostly disbelieving and a little disgusted that someone one level above stranger on the social totem pole would be asking him this. And Sora stared right back at him, daring him to stare him down, to actually put effort into it. Riku noticed, absently, how pleasant the breeze felt - the air itself seemed the same temperature as his skin, and all he felt was movement with no substance. He could notice these things during a stare-down. He was the zen master of stare-downs.

Riku shrugged. "I don't see the point."

Sora made a sound, a sound that must have been a _guffaw_, if it weren't for the fact that Riku thought nobody guffawed anymore. "You don't _see the point_ in having friends? What, there has to be a _gain_?"

He felt a little _insulted _that this new kid, the one who didn't have any roots here who didn't know anything about anyone here, least of all about Riku, would be acting so much wiser. A little _ticked off_. It bothered him when people assumed things about him.

Riku _hated_ that.

"I...haven't met anyone for whom just being their friend was enough," he sounded like he'd hung a question mark on that sentence. "Besides. It's just high school."

"Nobody's good enough to be your friend, huh?" Sora giggled. He sounded like dream-Sora, just enough to be disturbing. "What, _I'm_ not good enough to be your friend?" before Riku could respond, "So it's you against the world, Riku Tepes? Who do you actually think's gonna win?"

Riku stopped inside. He didn't know what to make of this situation. He didn't like to think himself pedantic, and he'd listen to views or explore two opinions on the same thing at a time and _then_ make a perfectly educated decision - . It wasn't that he didn't change his mind.

He just didn't want other people to change it.

He supposed he was horribly hypocritical. Making fun of all the people who only listened to other people when he only listened to himself, but Riku didn't trust anyone else to have a valid opinion.

"Whatever."

Sora laughed. "Oh, come on, that's no kind of answer."

Riku shoved off of the wall and entered the building, squeezing his mind shut as he walked past the first set of doors and trying not to feel as if he was in the belly of the beast for the second time that day. He was followed.

_That's right, little mice, just follow the bellwether. That'd probably be Sora. Sora the pied-fucking-piper.  
_

"Ri-_ku_!"

_"Tu m'aimes, Ri-**ku**?"_

"Give me a good reason why you're always so _mean_. Nothing in the world worth being nice to?"

"Give me a good reason you're so curious," he half-hissed. "What's my social life to you?"

"I like to know these things," Sora protested, tugging on his sleeves and walking next to Riku. And when Riku started to walk faster, Sora jogged a little so as to stand in _front_ of him and walk backwards. "I'd just...like to know."

Today Sora wasn't wearing a sweatshirt. He was all...primary colors and fingerless gloves. And _yellow shoes_. Who wore yellow shoes? There were strips of gauze wrapped around three of the fingers on his right hand.

Riku hated people who thought that they were making a statement by dressing differently, like your clothing really mattered either way to people who made real statements. He just _hated_ those...people.

The gauze, though, didn't look decorative. That was all Riku noticed before -

"Well?"

"In the...grand scheme of things, I don't really think it matters."

Sora stopped, standing right there in front of him with this big goofy grin, moving to the left when Riku tried to walk around him, and to the right when he tried to walk around him the other way.

"The grand scheme of things?" Sora rocked back onto the balls of his feet, his eyes bright and shiny.

_Shiny?_

"So what _is_ important in the grand scheme of things? I'm not talking personal happiness, because social interaction's necessary for that no matter _who_ you are, so you must mean _universally_, right Riku? So what's important for you _universally_, huh?"

And Riku just _stared_ at him, like he couldn't believe this was happening, like it was impossible some French kid he'd met less than a day ago was confronting him right now at seven fifty in the morning about all his beliefs like he was some kind of philosopher, and like Riku, too, could just automatically answer it.

And, even though it hurt to say it, "I don't know. I don't know what the universe cares about, okay? Can you move? I have to get to - " he paused, his mind blank. "Class."

"You don't know?" Sora looked ecstatic, the same ecstatic a teacher might look when he's gotten the answer he wants from a student. Not the _right_ answer, but the one that gives the teacher a chance to show off.

"So if friends aren't important to you, and nothing else is important enough to you," Sora said, with his eyes still twinkling, his Goddamn oughtta-be-sky-eyes. "Why are you still alive, Riku Tepes? If the universe if _so_ pointless, why didn't you just kill yourself when you realized it?"

"That's not what I said! I never said that!"

"You about did. _C'est_ _la même chose_."

"Sora-"

"What the heck, you can't just expect a guy to answer the meaning of life at eight in the morning when he's got to get to English?"

Riku sighed, and Sora let him walk around, let the two walk side by side as Riku headed for the history wing. "Y-yeah." He winced at his stuttering. He knew there were flaws in Sora's argument, but he just _said_ all of it with so little room for pointing out the flaws that Riku had given up.

"Okay, my pretty friend. You have until lunch."

Riku frowned at him and Sora just grinned. "What, is it the pretty part, the friend part or the lunch part?"

And he just sighed and turned down one hallway and pounded up the stairs like maybe if he rain hard enough and fast enough he'd push the stairs back, down, make them slip and carry away the bottom of the world with it. _How convenient that would be._

But Sora just _bounded_ up the stairs with him, maybe panting a little harder, not picking up that Riku didn't care how much he was questioned or ridiculed or how much his eyes were opened, he didn't _want _to be questioned when he didn't see the validity in any of this conversation. Why was Sora acting like he was some...some deep goddamn _guru_ or something? His questions were riddled with holes. Riku was just too tired to point them out as thoroughly as he ought to.

"Well?" he asked, still following next to Riku.

"All of them, I guess."

"Hey, I'll explain at lunch when you tell me the meaning of life."

"_Sora_," he said, half-exasperated, and then half-horrified at how familiar and downright..._teenaged_ he sounded when he said that.

"Ri-ku," Sora said back, tilting his head to one side, then the other. He smiled and leaned forward, then back, shifting on his feet and staring at his right hand. He wiggled his fingers.

"Did you know," he said quietly. "That there's a suicide every forty seconds?"

Riku started. He'd been staring into his classroom, just to take stock of how many people were in there, just to see if he should be worried about being late. He glanced at Sora, who was still looking at his hand with the three gauze-wrapped fingers, the rest of it covered by fingerless gloves, who was still rocking back and forth on his feet.

"What?"

"Every forty seconds. Somebody kills himself. From the time that you start your first period to the time it ends? Ninety kids have died. From the time school starts to the time it ends? Six hundred and thirty kids," and Riku was right, his eyes _were_ shiny, shiny the way they became shiny if you thought about dead things or hateful things or hurtful things.

"Sora..."

"What?" he looked back up to the taller boy, indignant. "What? I'm just saying, it might help you answer my question."

_I don't want to answer your question_, Riku thought, a bit viciously. _I don't think it's a valid question. I think you're just being vain, thinking that you're some kind of damn genius when all you have is a tongue and a fact and basic math skills._

The warning bell rang, the one that screamed in monotone _you have five minutes to get to class_, that shouted _get a move on_, that invaded the privacy of a person's mind. Sora winced, and stared at Riku with his big, oughtta-sky eyes that were shiny and a little red, and tried to smile like someone was pulling his mouth up with string.

"Do you know how much it pisses me off that people take their own lives when so many people are missing people that died on accident?"

'On accident.' Real Sora was so much...different from dream-Sora. So much ess eloquent.

But he was already half jogging down the hall to his class. Even though he'd followed Riku up to his, Sora's class was probably on the opposite side of the buildling, knowing him.

Not that Riku did.

* * *

Riku liked his history teacher. She was very...good at what she did.

She was a small woman, shorter than many of her students, and when she spoke she spoke so softly that you had to strain to hear what she was saying. And because of that, everyone wanted to hear what she was saying. Nobody had ever heard her raise her voice - oh, there were rumors that it happened, but nobody had seen it happen.

So Riku always paid attention to what she had to say, first period every single morning.

"Would someone please tell me what the homework was yesterday?"

There was a silent sort of rustling where everyone expected everyone else to sacrifice themselves. That perpetually selfish attitude of people, of asking other people to do things you won't do yourself - Riku _hated_ that, too.

Finally - "Yes, Zack?"

"We just had to outline section eight point four."

His teacher nodded, and looked at the class. "And I hope everyone did that. Get out your binders and a pencil, we have an open notes quiz."

Riku tried not to snort too loudly. Open notes quizzes were so...pointless. Just check if people did the work or not. It always took the class twice as long as it took him, too.

So of course he had fifteen minutes to sit there, staring at a wall and considering Sora's stupid question.

_"Why haven't you just killed yourself, if there's nothing worth living for?"_

He hadn't _said_ that. He didn't say he had no reason for living. He'd said the universe didn't care who you were friends with.

And at the end of class, as he walked into English, Sora's second stupid sentence poked him in the gut. Who tells a person something like that?

_From the time you start your first period to the time it ends? Ninety kids have died. Krsshk. Killed themselves,_ said a Sora in his head.

He sighed and took a seat in the back of the classroom, already waiting for the day to be over, counting down the three-hundred-sixty-some-odd minutes until the release.

And of course, of _course_, Sora would be in this class. Riku wondered to himself how he hadn't noticed him yesterday, but then realized that in his chronic state of ignoring anyone near him, especially in English, it wasn't remarkable. Sora wasn't that remarkable a kid, after all.

But then he sat down next to Riku, and for once he was glad that he'd somehow gotten landed in English class with the infamous Mr. Reno who was quite possibly the scariest shit in West Destiny Islands High School. Because if you tried to talk in his class, he didn't send you to the principal's office, he had you stand up and recite the Oath of Shame, which he gave everyone a copy of at the beginning of the year. Mr. Reno was intense, but one thing Riku appreciated about him was the fact that he at least enjoyed the things he taught.

Things happened in Mr. Reno's class that any person would think were rumors, because you couldn't believe a teacher could be like that and still teach in a public high school.

Fifteen minutes into the lesson that day, Kairi raised her hand.

"Okay, _think_ about it, Holden's not calling her and he not-calls her like fourteen times in the beginning of - yeah, Kairi?"

"Mr. Reno, can I go to the bathroom?"

And Mr. Reno started, and narrowed his eyes. He walked up to Kairi's desk, put his hands on it, and leaned forward. It was like a snake trying to stare down a bunny.

"No, Kairi."

"But-" all things considered, it was remarkable that she could even say that much. Riku'd been on the receiving end of that stare before. Mr. Reno tried a little too hard. Riku didn't like him that much, really.

"Why can't I let you go to the bathroom? Because you're _bored_. And you don't really have to _go _to the bathroom,_ do you_?"

Kairi winced. "Um-"

"I'll ignore this little incident if you don't do it again, hm, Kairi? Don't want to start your Tuesday repeating the Oath of Shame, do we?"

The smaller redhead winced.

And the whole class went like that, and Riku couldn't help but feel that it was so pointless. How school just kept going when peoples' lives were getting interrupted. When Riku had so much to think about - and no, little of it about Sora - he was stuck in a classroom with the crazy English teacher listening to Catcher in the Rye read aloud, one paragraph at a time, one kid at a time.

"Okay! Okay! Wait, I totally forgot! Sorry, Sora, you'll go tomorrow." Mr. Reno stood up and shook his head. "Um. Essays! You have to all write essays!"

Stunned silence. Not that it was unusual in his class.

"Personal essays! What makes you. Whatever. You get it. All that...shit, just, whatever! Nobody move I left the copies of the outline in the copy room!" Mr. Reno dashed out of the room frantically, and Riku sighed. Mr. Reno, it seemed, tried too hard to be quirky sometimes. He didn't seem to understand that it was only endearing if it was completely sincere. Riku really didn't like that about him.

This was one of those moments that just wasted his life. Completely unnecessary, to him.

Next to him, though, Sora was frozen stiff.

"Um. Riku?"

Riku didn't say anything. He wasn't very fond of Sora any more.

"Riku, uh, I'm not good at essays."

Riku rolled his eyes. Sora didn't get that you weren't supposed to talk when Mr. Reno wasn't in the room.

"And?"

"I mean, it's just using...a lot of English words, and...and I'm bad at spelling, and Riku he said it was a _personal_ essay -"

"I don't see how this is my problem."

Sora made and 'erk' sound and stared at him with wide eyes. "Okay, fine, smarty-pants, you really just _don't_ want _any_ friends - "

"Not in this high school, no."

"So what, in college you'll be a social butterfly?"

"Yeah, sure. Whatever."

Sora laughed, and Riku realized with a start that they were the only people in the class talking. He hoped Sora lowered his voice.

"That'll work out. Get no social experience whatsoever and just, what, rely on beginner's luck when you graduate? Job interviews? You don't need anybody until they'll stay for a long, looong time."

What a goddamn lonely person Riku Tepes was.

"Come on, just help a stranger out with his essay."

He didn't even really have a right to be.

"You like angst? I can tell you angst. I've got _lots_ of angst."

"Sora..." Riku sighed. "Shut up. Whatever. Yes, I'll help you, okay?"

And in the same way nobody seemed to be paying attention, nobody seemed to take note of this completely off-base and ridiculous happening, nobody was definitely going to tell their friends about it at lunch, nobody wondered what the hell Sora had that they didn't, and nobody wondered why Riku had said more than three words that day.

"Thank you! See, you don't know it, but I just helped you out with a future job interview. I bet you're just socially awkward."

"...I don't like _people_," Riku said. And he was mildly disappointed to discover that this did, in fact, completely sum up his thoughts on people as a whole. That was the problem. He just didn't like them.

"So, if you met people you liked, you'd be friends with them?"

Riku didn't say anything. That was another thing about Riku Tepes. If he wanted a conversation to stop somewhere, the conversation stopped. He just wouldn't reply any more.

So Mr. Reno came back and went on a little rant about personal essays, and when the kids groaned he glared at the class collectively and told them it was practice for college applications. And that if that didn't satisfy them, they could make up their own damn reasons why this essay was a good idea, because the whole junior class had to do them anyways.

And Sora just sat next to Riku and smirked, and smirked, and smirked. Riku found himself growing rapidly tired of this boy who thought he'd made it past his defenses, just because Riku figured out that talking back at him made him go away faster.

_I don't need any friends. And if I did, they sure as hell wouldn't be French, and they wouldn't be philosophical at eight in the morning, and they wouldn't ask me for help on English essays, and they'd know the difference between intelligence and just asking stupid questions._

_

* * *

_Sora followed him into the lunch room, too. Riku didn't say anything.

"Prickly guy, aren't you? What, did I piss you off? Haven't you ever thought you might be wrong about something?"

He was like a little child, is what.

"I didn't really expect you to have an answer for me by lunch, you know. Heck, when somebody asked me what reason I had for living it took me nine months to figure out an answer that satisfied me, and I couldn't even _tell_ the guy since we weren't in contact any more."

Riku hated the lunch room, too. How every group of people always sat at a specific table, and if they found someone sitting at "their" table before them they acted like it was the biggest social affront a person could commit. But when Riku sat at a table, you either found someplace else to complain or you shut the heck up and ate your food. That's what lunch with Riku Tepes was. Silent.

"But hey, nine months after I got asked I gave birth to a big 'appy epiphany!"

"So you're just asking this question because you already know the answer." He hated that, too. The way people would ask something like 'Hey, do you know what radiolarian ooze is?', even though damn near _nobody_ outside a marine biology lab knows what the hell 'radiolarian ooze' is, because somebody wanted to act smarter than you.

"No." Sora frowned at him, sitting down at the nearest lunch table.

And Riku was all set to pull a Riku and walk right on by him and let the conversation end right there.

But Sora pulled what Riku would later refer to as a Sora and grabbed his wrist, yanking him down onto the seat next to him.

"I just think, well, it helped _me_ get through a lot of stuff, so it might help other people. And you look like somebody who could use a little help, you know?"

Riku stared at him. Behind him, he could feel the beginnings of a glare from whatever group's table they'd ended up sitting at.

"Ow," he said definitively, yanking his arm from Sora's hand and fishing his lunch out of his backpack. It wasn't like he had any place better to eat a turkey sandwich.

Sora snerked, but got up to go buy his lunch, leaving his backpack next to Riku and returning a few silent minutes later with a big grin.

"You know that Zack Fair guy, he's an okay guy."

Riku stabbed at his yogurt with a spoon.

"Well yeesh. I thought the guy who just moved here was supposed to be the introverted one."

How generic Sora was. How boring. How disappointing. How absolutely God-awful uninteresting he'd become in a few short minutes. He'd become another goddamn Zack.

"Hey, can I share my epiphany with you, Riku Tepes?"

Riku snorted and stabbed at his yogurt again. "What, this life-changing meaning of life thing?"

"Sort of. I mean, you're referring to what I'm talking about."

"Fine. Whatever."

Riku wondered if he could really justify how much he lashed out. He was wary of being just another angry teenager, versus a guy just sick of the world. Which brought up Sora's stupid, pointless question again. Why keep living? Was he just afraid?

_Dammit, if I'm going to think deep thoughts, I want to think them myself!_

What a selfish person Riku Tepes was.

"I've figured," Sora said quietly, "Living is basically the best form of revenge I can take. You know? Screw you universe, you kill - you pull some stupid stuff, I won't even let it phase me! I'll just...just be upset and, and keep going! You know? Screw you universe!" Sora laughed.

Riku felt a little pang of guilt. He didn't really know Sora's story. He probably had to tell _somebody_ that. Made sense it would be Riku - who was he going to tell? His betta?

So all Riku said was "Oh," just as quietly, and not harshly (as much as he could manage).

"Is that an 'oh, I think that's pretty dumb but obviously the kid's in a fragile state so I'll just placate him' oh, or is it a different one?"

"I think..." He was tempted to stop his sentence there when he looked over at Sora, who had his chin in his hand and was absently spearing pasta with his plastic cafeteria fork. "That's actually pretty good, for a kid our age."

"Yeah?" Sora smiled. "I kinda hoped so. It's kinda been my, um..._devise_. What's it? Motto."

"Been through shit?" He didn't know what made him ask. Maybe it was that look in Sora's eyes that said he wanted somebody who didn't care to ask him about it.

"I shouldn't really tell you."

"Yeah, sorry," Riku agreed, leaning back to toss his trash in the nearest dumpster.

"But, um," Sora brightened. "About that English essay thing. Are you free today? Could you, um, come over to my house to brainstorm? I usually get picked up but Tuesdays I walk home. It's only about half an hour away. And I'm not good with the...writing thing. In English. Even in French, it was my worst subject. So?"

Riku frowned. He hated going over to peoples' houses. You never knew, exactly, which rooms it was socially acceptable to go into without a host, how comfortable you could get on the furniture, and if they had pets...well.

"Riku."

"Sora."

"Say yes. I can seriously guilt you into doing this like you have no idea, and it'll make you even more uncomfortable than you are now. I swear to God." And he looked so serious that Riku almost burst out laughing, were it not for the fact that it would have been completely unlike him. He couldn't remember laughing so hard he couldn't breathe.

"How so?"

"It has to do with therapy," Sora taunted him in a sing-song voice. "Oh, hey, when does lunch period end?"

Riku sighed. "...twelve fifteen."

"And that other thing? Man, you would not believe my house. It's so ridiculous. My foster mum is insane, I'm telling you."

Foster mother? Riku didn't bother mentally asking himself if Sora's parents were dead, then. It would have been too stupid for words, like those people that ask 'Where am I?' after waking up, no matter how obvious it is you're in a hospital.

So he hoped he wasn't saying it out of pity when he said "Fine. If you need help with your essay." That seemed like a valid reason to ask for help. Riku respected that. Asking for help when you needed it.

So Sora's pros may have had a lead on his cons, but another kind of people Riku hated, he hated people who made unreasonable assumptions when all they had was right-now information.

He hated those people.

* * *

A/N: If you ask me if Taylor Mali is...

a) a musician

b) a woman

c) dead

I will smack you on the nose.

Anyways.

So, credit goes to Mr. Mali for the poem at the beginning, and I can give you a link if you want to see the whole thing or some of his other poem texts (or just google his name, his website comes up first thing).

Non-Mali-things:

Also vaguely referenced here was 'Suicide Notes' by (oddly enough) the Suicide Kings, which is probably the most depressing spoken poetry I've ever heard in my life. Anyways. That's where the 'living is the best form of revenge' thing comes from. I think I'm not conceited enough to actually put my own philosophies on here and have characters be like 'ooh that's smart'. I've seen people do that. 'S friggin annoying. And doesn't it bother anybody else when fan fiction gets deep like that? I read fan fic to enjoy myself. I wanna think I'll read a book. So don't take any of this seriously unless you want to.

But I'd love to hear good or bad thoughts so far? This is pretty different from what I usually do, Nitlon-standards.

* * *


	3. Hold Your Fist Over Your Chest

* * *

**This Is How Big Your Heart Is.**

* * *

Song: _Mrs. Bagwell's Rhumba_ from the Mirrormask soundtrack. Just search 'Bagwell Rhumba' on Seeqpod if you'd like to hear it for free (and legally).

* * *

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."  
- **Oscar Wilde** _(1854 - 1900)_

* * *

The walk to Sora's house was as hot as it was dry as it was pensive.

_Pensive,_ Riku thought. _I wonder if it comes from that French word. Whatever it is._

He coughed as, in front of him, Sora unwittingly kicked up a cloud of dust.

Riku often thought about their island. It was the biggest island in Destiny Islands, and had been quite thoughtfully named Destiny Island. To him, it was so stupid it looped all the way _around_ the stupid gradient and came out as anti-smart.

Destiny Island was divided by a long mountain range, essentially splitting the island in half. East and West Destiny Island. And due to a rain shadow, one side got nearly all the rain, all year. So really, it was divided into the 'wet bit' and the 'dry bit' for the natives. Whenever Riku talked to someone from the wet half of the island, they always commented on how _nice_ the dry heat was, how _refreshing_ it was to be out of the humidity.

Riku said that those people had never had to spend three hours in a classroom breathing dust because the air conditioning wasn't working and the only option was to open the windows, because if they had they'd know that the sweating teenagers more than made up for any _natural_ humidity.

Hence the pueblos. They had a natural way of mediating the air inside. There were still a good deal of people who preferred those to relying on heating and cooling systems which often broke down _because_ they were choked by dust or heat.

Riku shook his head to clear it, looking over to Sora, who seemed unbothered by the heat. It was probably new to him, though. Didn't it snow in France?

He wondered if snow really made everything look as perfect as it did in movies. He doubted it. Hollywood exaggerated everything. It probably fell in uneven clumps and turned gross after a couple of days. If he ever bothered to remember, he might ask Sora about that later.

Sora who, at the moment, was walking some invisible straight line, keeping his feet directly lined up with each other neatly and his arms out to the side, as if balancing on a rope. He was staring intently at the ground.

Riku looked down. He saw nothing interesting. He saw a pale biege sidewalk and, flanking it, some tall dry grass and the occasional tough flower.

He breathed in through his nose and sighed. It was like smelling heat and nothing else.

"Hey, so, my house is just a few minutes away," Sora said, turning his head back to talk to Riku.

"Uh huh." Riku reached up and tugged out his hair tie. He hated wearing a ponytail, and at this point it wasn't even helping. What Riku didn't need to look like was a gay pirate.

It wasn't that he hated gay pirates, but he didn't want to _look_ like a gay pirate. Even gay pirates, he mused, probably didn't want to look like gay pirates.

"Riku! This way!" Sora tugged on his shirt, and Riku admitted he would have kept aimlessly walking forward if he hadn't been pulled. He didn't even know that there was a road down that way, it was so bumpy and dirty.

"So, what's your essay going to be about?"

Riku looked at Sora dully. "I don't know." He still felt a little forced to come.

"Aw, you don't? I was totally going to mooch off your idea! I guess we'll help each other, then," Sora laughed, tugging on a piece of his hair. "I just can't find any good middle ground. I don't want to write about like 'I got lost in the mall when I was seven for thirty seconds' or something. I guess that would work, though."

Mr. Reno had called the essay dumb. He'd said he didn't see the point in it, but they were going to damn well do it if it killed them. He'd sat on his stool staring at his students with serpentine eyes and hissed "Listen, this is the shittiest essay I'm ever going to make you write, but your whole grade's doing it. It's not my fault the principal's such an idiot. Making kids write dumbass essays, makin' me speak 'normally', dude's a prick, y-" at which point he'd blinked, looked around the classroom and promptly shooed his kids out seven minutes early.

Sora snorted. "But on the other hand," he continued, "My only other option is just gonna be the obvious, and that'll be whiny and _way_ too...well, you know," he said. Riku did know. It would just be way _too_ something, writing about dead parents. Demeaning, maybe, or just wrong.

"And anything else big is related to that - like moving down here." He sighed.

"Yeah," Riku said after a while, pausing to think of what actually would work for himself. Mr. Reno said that people usually wrote about favorite books or friends or relationships. Riku was just tempted to make something up. 'Oh, my grandfather was actually a samurai, see, and he taught me how to use a sword and then the chivalry of being a samurai in ancient Japan, also I'm half fairy and this has affected me as a person.'

He sighed.

"You're not really a talker, huh, Riku?" Sora asked him, beginning to fish in one of his more obscurely placed pockets, presumably for a key. He looked like a moron doing it, too, like the words 'Sora' and 'suave' had never even been in the same sentence.

"Not when I don't have things to say."

"Or people to say them to?"

Riku shrugged. "I guess."

At this point, he paused to look at where, exactly, it seemed they were headed. And naturally, of _course_, Sora lived in the crazy house. It wasn't that it was a pueblo, of course, but it was that it was covered in the most obscure and bizarre sorts of art-deco murals. The kind that weren't even of anything, or if they _were_ of anything, it was something ridiculous like 'wind'. That's what it looked like. Big flowers, fractured and uneven with the paint peeling, looked like extensions of the shrub that grew along the side of the house. What humanoid creatures were featured were elongated and distorted, with tiny heads and huge hands.

"Oh, yeah. Did I tell you about that? She has a friend who's like an artist or something, and so he did this when she moved in. I think it's really cool."

Riku did not think it was really cool. He thought it was really creepy, and he thought it was really pretentious, but he did not think it was really cool.

But it was really _something_. What with the dark lines and the white shadows and the people that weren't. It wasn't strictly likeable, but it was impressive.

Sora laughed and tugged on Riku's arm, towards a perfectly normal white door with the number _779_ in metal figures. And he noticed, in that detached way he did because Riku didn't let himself be distracted by pointless things like people, that someone had measured the height of the doorway and penciled it in. _200cm_, it informed him, with a vertical line to show which side of the door had been measured.

Riku wondered why somebody thought that was important enough to measure the height of the doorway, but he wondered a lot of things about people. They just didn't make sense to him. _Any_ of them.

There was an awkward moment of foot-shuffling as he followed closely after Sora, trying to close the door at the same time the other boy was putting his stuff down on a table closeby. And somehow, for just one warm second, they were so close they could _smell_ each other.

When he was a little kid, and still going over to friends' houses, Riku noticed how everybody's house smelled a little differently. It was a describable smell, exactly, just all the parts of a person's life that culminated in that smell. He'd lost that as he grew up, barely noticed it any more.

But Sora smelled of vegetables. Not in a bad way - he didn't smell like fungus or rotten squash. He just smelled like dirt in the rain, clean and new and promising and a little nostalgic. But not in a good way, either.

"Sorry," Sora grinned, coughing a little. He moved away, kicking off his shoes. "Coming in's always awkward 'cause there's nowhere to put your stuff. Anyways, just dump it on the table over there."

Riku dumped it on the table over there, and took stock of the room, which was surprisingly high-ceilinged and had the same yellow stucco walls as appeared outside, lacking murals.

But there were things on the walls, rough, old things like masks - many masks - and pictures, drawings, even framed quotes. Sculptures, too, on those fancy shelves that looked like perfect square units tacked to the walls. Black ones with yellow eyes. The whole room just had a musty, old feel too it. Riku felt out of place. He wondered if anybody felt _in_ place here - it was one of those places that seemed to look down on you just for coming in. How much he _hated_ when people designed their houses for looking at, not playing in.

"Oh hey, you want music?"

And not waiting for an answer - not that he ought to have expected one - Sora went over to what, if Riku wasn't mistaken and he began to _sorely_ hope he was, was a record player. The old kind that played actual, legitimate records the size of small car tires. Riku was mostly sure that those didn't exist outside a DJ's studio. And at least those weren't made of wood.

He was surprised to see it didn't have the bell of a _gramophone_ or something attached to it.

"Yeah, sorry," Sora grinned sheepishly, getting a record from the adjacent shelf and removing it frome its cardboard sleeve. "My foster mom's got this, like, _thing_ about radios." He paused while putting the record in the player. "...Belle's got a thing about a lot of things. I guess you have to be crazy to be a good inventor?"

_Belle_? Was _everything_ in this kid's life French?

Sora plopped the needle down and as the static crackles and pops began, Riku looked at the sticker in the center. It was blue, and though he couldn't read quite what it said he noticed that the writing was uneven and spiky.

A brassy, accented voice started in soon after a bright piano tune, and it seemed like he was just making whatever fun sounds landed in his mouth, rolling his R's.

"_Ah-ha-hey! A-sol-say! Rachurnmow, y'okay da-dow~!_" He drew out random 'ooh's. Not Beach Boys 'oohs', but operatic ones.

Occasionally, just to mess with you, the singer would add in random, coherent English words. Riku heard 'shadow' and, once, quite clearly, 'sausages'.

"_Yakimbezea-EL! Aderail, facoshaymemboosh, yaroo-! Rashelsh! Eeeh!_" in came the operatic squeaking again, accompanied by a trumpet with an attitude problem.

Riku had no idea what the Hell he was supposed to make of this. It was hard to dislike something when you had no idea what was going on.

"This is probably one of my favorite records ever," Sora giggled, walking through an open doorway into a room the Riku could see had rustic, red-brown walls and a sink. The kitchen, then.

"To get to my room you can either climb the stairs in here or just go outside and climb up two, um, flights of ladders and go through the big window. Want some food? I'm starving, but I'm always hungry, so..."

Sora popped his head back out into the living area, where Riku was still standing dazedly and tallying up his homework assignments in his head. He just wanted Sora to piss him off so he'd have a good excuse to leave. Because Riku couldn't just stop feeling neutral towards Sora (which for Riku was the equivalent of throwing the kid a welcome parade to the Deranged Psyche of Island Boy), and he hated people who hated other people with no actual reason.

Riku knew that looked like a double standard from the outside, but him just being there proved he always had legitimate reasons for not wanting to be around a person before snubbing them.

Which is why he wished Sora would stop being so damn _interesting_. One moment he's getting cheesesticks from a fridge, the next it turns out he's got a Maincoon cat with practically-blue fur and eyes yellower than a canary.

Even for a Maincoon it was big, too, more like a smallish dog, and it sat on the back on the black leather couch and watched Riku disapprovingly.

Now, apparently this Belle woman had a _thing _about radios.

Well, Riku had a _thing_ about cats. He didn't _like_ them, the way they stared at you like just because they were _cats _and you weren't made you completely useless. How they just liked to screw with peoples' heads.

But the cat didn't look too mean, so Riku figured that if he was going to, now would be the time to ingratiate himself.

"Hey," he said carefully, taking a step towards it. It didn't move, just kept watching him with those wild eyes.

"Hey, cat," he said, taking another step.

"_You - hey - you! Haha! You can't see me! Shtooltz!_" the brassy singer said through the repetitive, minor piano tune and the trumpet. Whatever it was, it wasn't pop, it wasn't modern, it wasn't jazz.

In the kitchen, Sora was getting a couple of sodas from the fridge and putting some food on a plastic plate.

"_Silly boy! Oh, silly boy - you can't! Come to my place~!_"

The cat narrowed its eyes and swished its tail in a graceful S.

"Hey now," Riku said resignedly. "It's not like I _want_ to be here, don't get all defensive."

Sora, upon seeing the situation before him - the pretty boy with the superiority complex trying to approach the weirdest cat in existence - stopped in the doorway, leaning against it, plate in one hand and sodas in the other. He tried not to giggle. And _oh_, the record was getting to his favorite part. After his favorite part he never bothered listening all the way through the rest of the track.

"Cat," Riku said simply, and reached out to pet the rough mane on its face, his hand hovering a few centimeters away. The cat just looked at him with its angry yellow eyes.

"_Oh-ho!_"

Sora stifled a giggle. Riku was so _serious_, even about petting a cat.

"_Don't let them see you're afraid!_"

Riku faltered.

"_Don't let them see you're afraid! - Don't let them see you're afr- Don't let them see you're afr- Don't let them see you're_-"

"Oh, sorry!" Sora rushed over to the record player and picked up the needle again. "Sometimes it just gets _stuck_ there, it's so weird." He frowned, and tried to figure out a way of putting down either the food, the sodas or the needle so that he didn't end up staining something important.

Riku snatched back his hand and went to pick up his backpack again. That was entirely too disturbing.

"Sai, what're you doing, you _know_ you're not supposed to go on the couch! Get down from there!" Finally just dropping the needle, and then placing the sodas next to the record player leaving a reverberating "_Don't let them see you're afrai-! Don't let them see you're afrai-!_" and Sora shooed the cat off the sofa.

"It's okay, Saïx's like that with everyone," Sora told him as "Saïx" the lynx-cat pranced through the room and up a narrow staircase.

Sora the weird-kid followed him, after stopping the record and grabbing the sodas again, and Riku reluctantly followed the both of them upstairs to Sora's room.

* * *

Sora's room was white.

That was really all that could be said of it. It had white walls, the bedsheets were light grey, and the only color was his clothing and the few items on the shelves around.

"I get to repaint it soon, but until I moved in it was just storage or like a guest room or something, so it's boring," he laughed, plopping down on the bed and grabbing a cheese stick.

"Uh huh," Riku said, putting down his bag.

Sora patted the spot next to him and grinned, taking a bite of his food. And as Riku (reluctantly) sat down next to him, Saïx lay down between them and glared at Riku defiantly.

_My human. I won't let you get a-ny closer._

Riku snorted and thought, to himself, _No interest in doing so._

"I have a lot of homework, so- "

"You know, I'm in like seventy percent of your classes and I've stalked you at lunch both days I've been going to school. You do not have a lot of homework, and what you do have, I have too, so we can do it together." And Sora and his stupid eyes stared at Riku, who crossed his arms and tried to pretend he wasn't pissed off by the cutesy act.

"Yeah," he said curtly.

Sora sighed and took another bite of his string cheese. "Uh-oh, I scared the rare Riku-turtle back into his shell."

Riku thought to respond to this bitingly, but instead went with bitter silence as his weapon of choice. He crossed his arms and shifted to lean against the head of the bed with his legs in a pretzel.

Sora just shrugged, scratched Saïx behind the ears (to which he did not react kindly) and stood up to get a notebook and pen from his desk, sitting down at the end of the bed with it and staring at Riku like he was a writing muse.

And for some reason, Riku felt _safe_. Like by sitting on the end of the greyish bed, Sora had established a little territory with him and Riku and a cat, and Riku could breathe. He didn't need to deal with things outside of the area of the bed. And if things needed to fit into the bed before he dealt with them, Riku eat the crap the world fed him in little bite-sized pieces.

Not that he was _happy_, or anything. Sora was doing this little tilt-your-head-to-the-side-like-a-goddam-crow business, like he was trying to look quirky or cutesy or _something_, and Riku thought it looked incredibly dumb. He hated it, when people looked so stupid and didn't realize it.

"Um," Sora said after a while. "How about learning English? That was kind of...life-changing, I guess? Or, convenient."

Riku just let out a long, bothered sigh and leaned further back. "I don't know, _Sora_."

Sora winced, because the venom with which his name was said that time was not as fun as the curious way it'd been said the first time.

So he fake-pouted and put down the things he was holding, crawling up the bed to look at Riku's face a little. Riku just stared out of his wispy white bangs with his clear teal eyes and looked at Sora like he didn't know how to use his face. But he did, oh he did, and his stare could cut right through a person.

But Sora didn't care. He just sat down in Riku's lap with a very determined look in his face, grabbed two fistfuls of bang and tugged them up.

"Holy shit!"

"_What_?" Riku asked, seething quietly. He _did not like_ being touched. By anybody. The only people outside his family that touched him were people who didn't understand personal boundaries.

Therefore.

"You actually have a forehead!"

"...what?" he sounded considerably less threatening.

"I figured there was maybe a fifty percent chance that the reason you kept your hair in your face was because you were actually a machine, and you didn't have skin covering this part, and that's why you hate everybody!"

Riku frowned inwardly. He didn't hate _everybody_.

He - well, he didn't hate _everybody_. He didn't hate Sora, strictly.

"Sora..."

And abruptly he had his hair back in his eyes and Sora was looking at him blankly, his chin in his hand.

"So do you think I could even get a decent rough draft outta the bilingual thing?"

Riku shifted uncomfortably. "Sora."

Sora blinked at him. "What?"

"...please get off my lap."

"Huh?" He looked down and appeared to notice _for the first time_ that he was in an incredibly compromising position. His eyes widened and he leapt backwards, tripping over gangly limbs and crawling backwards like a crab to the edge of the bed. "Oh jeez! Man, everybody always says I've got issues with personal boundaries, I just never got what they meant cause I usually only do it to people who're used to it. Man! Oh, I'm so sorry!"

Riku snorted. "It's...yeah." He wasn't really bothered by it all too much, but he didn't want Sora to think he was _okay_ with it. That he liked people climbing over him.

So he just rifled through his own backpack and got out his English binder to brainstorm.

"Ri-ku?"

_"Do you **like** me, Ri-ku?"_

"What."

"What're you writing?"

"Brainstorms." He wrote 'personal essay' in the center of a blank page and circled it, adding a branch for his first idea.

After a moment of consideration, he wrote down _pets_ and a branch off that which read _George_.

At this time he noticed Sora peering at his paper. He was leaning forward on his hands and stretching his neck out as far as he could, and Riku began to feel a little uncomfortable.

"Wait, you write in _cursive_? Who writes in cursive? Who's George?"

Riku rolled his eyes and threw Sora's previous words back at him, Riku-style. "I take it you're quite a bit of a talker."

"Yeah, that's another problem I have. You're kind of the opposite, aren't you? Totally normal life, hates contact, hates talking, pessimistic -"

Riku almost bared his teeth at that but chose, instead, to snap his eyes to Sora's and hold the kid there. A stare from Riku Tepes could freeze a person so much that they'd be thawing on the later side of the next century. So Sora was left kneeling on the bed, almost falling over, staring at the other boy and blinking, trying to understand why he stopped speaking.

"Don't talk to me like you know who the Hell I am," Riku said quietly, after a while.

And Sora didn't say anything for another while, but then shook his head and leaned forward more. "Yeah, but was I actually wrong about any of that?"

Riku didn't say anything.

So the French kid who smelled like spring in New England leaned forward and flicked his forehead. "You might not, but you might as well have a big ol' machine up there for how human you act, you little white-haired doofus."

Riku sluggishly swatted his hand away with a frown. "_Sora_," he said. "Don't."

It should have been awkward. But it wasn't.

"So anyway, who's George?" Sora grinned at him, big and goofy.

"He was my first pet," he said reluctantly.

"What was he? Dog, bird, cat?"

"No." He didn't offer anything else.

"_Fish_?"

"Closer."

"Riku Tepes," Sora said, wrinkling his nose. "Tell me you didn't have a pet _shark_."

"Those are fish, so no."

Sora groaned and fell backwards dramatically, just barely avoiding the cat's tail. "How can it be _kind of_ a fish and _not_ a fish?"

"I never said it was a fish."

He snorted again. "Well is it some sort of stupid Destiny-Island-_pseudo-fish_ that I wouldn't have possibly ever heard of?"

Riku licked one of his teeth half-absentmindedly and half-maliciously, and sighed through his nose. "Octopus."

Sora sat up abruptly. "You had a pet _octopus_."

"My mom's big on weird ocean animals and stuff. We have an eel now." Riku wrote down 'eel' next to 'George', creating a carrot between them and writing a question mark.

"And what's its name, _Roger_?"

Riku didn't answer. He didn't feel like answering, so he didn't answer. That was how Riku Tepes functioned.

Riku Tepes wasn't really too big on social norms when they didn't suit him.

So Sora just sighed, grabbed his soda and stared moodily at his blank paper. After a while he started to doodle on it. Apparently, Sora was the kind of person who doodled socks when the mood struck, until the moment his eyes lit up and he straightened his back before hunching over to write furiously.

And because he couldn't help it, Riku happened to see what was being written.

_'Riku Tepes and his smexy hips!'_ was what was being written.

And Riku wasn't normally the type of person to judge other people's thought processes out loud unless they were really, hideously stupid, but those were _his_ (smexy) hips being written about, and he was feeling uncomfortable. "Sora, what...?"

"So you _do_ notice other people!"

"What?"

"Be honest, you don't care about what's going on around you unless it directly involves you."

If this was the piece of shit the world was going to feed him first, Riku began to think, then clearly a territory the size of the bed was far too large. He cringed inwardly, and maybe a little outwardly. So Sora was also one of those stupid _judgmental _- well. _Stupidly judgmental_ people. Who said everything out loud.

But still, he was curious the way a fish is curious about something glinting in the water. It's always going to be a bottle top, but you want to look, just in case this _one_ time it's your gold coin.

"What makes you say that?" he said evenly.

"Come on. You glare at anyone who talks to you - you're doing it _right now_ - and your default is disliking people. Admit it, the only reason you came over to my house today was because of the whole suicide thing. It must've pissed you off or..." Sora sighed and looked at his watch. Belle was due home any minute now, probably covered in bits of whatever she was working on and looking like the lunatic she was. That woman was a good kind of insane.

"Like I said," Riku told him, seemingly unphased. Just underneath he was spluttering a little and trying to get his temper and his conscience to quit cat-fighting. "I just...don't see the point in being friendly to people."

Sora snorted and scooted up to sit next to Riku, this time a safe distance away, just enough to brush their shoulders.

"Doesn't mean other people are worse than you for not thinking like that. I don't think like that, do you hate me?"

Riku rolled his head to the side and stared out of Sora's window. It must have been on the second or third floor, because he could see dozens of houses and shops and people walking around and in them, apologizing for brushing shoulders. That was another thing Riku hated, though, he hated how people apologized for _pointless_ things like sneezing too close and they wouldn't apologize for things that mattered like stealing. A person could steal a toothbrush from a drugstore and never even whisper 'sorry' under their breath, but bumping into somebody in a movie theater automatically called for it.

The world didn't make any goddam _sense_ to Riku Tepes!

"...oi, this is actually the part where you vehemently deny what I just said."

"I don't think I hate you." _Yet._

Sora grunted and leaned his head on Riku's shoulder, much to the latter's discomfort. What _was_ it about this guy? What kind of a _boy _was so...touchy-feely? Why didn't Riku just _smack_ him already?

_Because Mom always taught you not to hit girls_, his temper snickered, which earned it a crisp slap from his conscience.

Riku was too lazy to bother smacking Sora, so instead he wondered, idly, if everybody felt this warm when they were resting their heads on your shoulder. The kid's cheek felt feverish.

Five minutes later, he said "Wait."

"Oh, I'm sorry, is my falling asleep too fast-paced for you?" Sora mumbled.

Riku rolled his shoulder at an attempt to get the sleepy teenager off of him, but succeeded only in shifting Sora's head a little backwards. The sliver of now-exposed skin on his shoulder felt suddenly cold.

"What the hell do you mean 'Riku Tepes and his sexy hips'?"

"Admit it," came the muffled giggle. Sora flipped around and lay down, burrowing his face under his pillow. "It got your attention, didn't it?"

Riku just readjusted the sleeve on his newly-freed arm and looked out the window again, feeling every part the lazy teenage boy. He didn't answer.

"Hey," said the pillow-mole. "Can I ask you another one of those questions you seem to hate?"

"Why?"

"'Cause nobody else thinks about them when I ask. Just sorta gives up after figuring out it's too hard to figure out," Sora said, and sort-of-laughed. He took a big breath underneath the pillow and circumvented the urge to return to socially awkward but nice and dry Riku heat.

"...yeah. Okay." Sora turned around again and stared up at his almost-friend and his angry eyes.

"Just because a person, like, doesn't _think_ the same as you, do you still listen to..._why_? You know, why they think that?"

And as Riku lapsed into pensive silence, he realized Sora was probably screwing with his head. Probably read this stuff in some stupid teen drama novel.

His sensible side rolled its eyes and muttered _Yeah, Sora's definitely the type for soap operas, too. Riku, you're going to be that cranky old guy who shouts 'damn kids' whenever a ball rolls into your yard._

So he just gritted his teeth and said, "No, not really."

"Yes!" Sora cried, sitting up. "Some honesty! You just don't want to go to the trouble of - " he blinked and scooted back again. "Sorry. Belle says I'm too honest with people. I haven't actually had to meet new friends since, you know, starting school when I was five until now, so...it's not really..."

"Yeah..." Riku trailed off. The sun was starting to be pulled underneath the horizon. "It's...I mean, whatever. Honesty's...good." It felt weird to even say it. And he wasn't sure how much he was lying.

"Yeah."

He mentally grimaced before saying, "So what were you gonna tell me?"

Sora looked at him wide-eyed again. "Oh! Um...you just don't really...want to go to the trouble of changing your mind. So you tell yourself that what you think now is final when you a year from now will probably think you're being stupid. I guess. That's how I am. I - I don't know."

"Look," Riku said. "My opinions are mine, and if I think they're right, and I don't want to listen to a bunch of whiny teenagers sharing their views on...I don't know, getting a girlfriend or something. That's fine."

"No it's not," Sora said.

"What?"

He paused and tilted his head to the side a little, thinking before he leapt. "Just...just because they're not _your_ reasons doesn't make them bad reasons to do something. And just because your reasons are your reasons doesn't make them good ones."

They stared at each other for who-knows-how-long with awkward silence punctuated by rustling sheets or Saïx yawning and making mildly irritated noises.

Dammit, how did all of their conversations turn into _debates_ like this?

There was the noise of an angrily slamming door downstairs, _Cree-eeeak, SMASH!_ and they both jumped a little. Saïx jumped off the bed and out the door, trotting down the stairs silently.

"Yes, _well_," said a feminine voice, accompanied by the sound of soft footsteps. "I'm _so glad_ you could give me a ride home. _I can't imagine how I missed the last bus_," she hissed. It was a shame, too, it sounded like she had a very musical voice. She was using it so harshly.

There was the sound of clunky workboots. "Oh, it was no trouble at all! I was only too glad to help out the damsel in distress," the man's voice was a deep rumble. Even Riku shuddered at the undilted sexism in his comment.

There was a stifled silence as the teenagers listened. Sora was hunched with his knees against his chest, biting his knuckle and making stifled laugh noises.

"_Well_," the woman said again. "Perhaps next time we'll have to cut our little _after-work-chat_ short for _once_."

"Belle," the guy said. Sora shuddered with visible dislike and caught Riku's eye. They started grinning. "I don't mind giving you a ride home, I never will! We're both such busy people."

"Speaking of busy - " she sounded hopeful.

"You'll think about my offer, won't you?"

There was a sigh. "Yes, Gaston. I'll be considering it, I already am, really -"

"Do you have an answer?"

"_No_." She sounded, perhaps, a _bit_ too forceful upon saying it. "I mean, I don't have an answer. Now, I think it'd be best if you got going - like you said, so much to do! I'm sure my foster son is just eager for dinner. You know how _teenage boys_ get."

"Ah," he rumbled. "Yes. Well, I suppose...you're right. But I'll see you -"

"Yes, tomorrow, good-bye Gaston, it was lovely seeing you!" _Cree-eeeak, **SMASH!**_

Sora jumped up at clattered down the stairs, followed after a moment by a morbidly curious Riku.

They got downstairs just in time to see Belle leaning her back against the shut door, sighing and sinking down to the ground. Her eyes closed, she mouthed _"Five...four...three...two...one!"_ She opened her eyes.

She looked at Sora.

"Is he _gone_?" she grinned at him and stood up, peeking out one of the windows. "Augh, can you _imagine_? He asked to have dinner." She groaned. "Ugh, _me_, dating that borish - brainless - !"

Sora laughed and grabbed Riku's wrist, pulling them further into the living room. "Aw, can't you see it? Madame Gaston!"

"Shut up, you little ingrate," Belle laughed a musical laugh and turned around, fixing Riku with a stare.

So _that's _where Sora'd learned it. To stare at someone with such honest sincerity it stung.

"Ah. Hello. Didn't know there was anyone else here to listen to me verbally amuse my charge." She smiled at him.

Riku wasn't too big on sex for a teenage boy, but even he thought Belle sure deserved her name. It was like everything in her face was custom-designed to compliment everything else. Even her eyes, big and brown and warm, they were so different from other peoples' eyes. Just in color, was all, Riku did hate people who said eyes were the window to the soul.

"...yeah."

"Oh, right! Belle, um, this is Riku. He's helping me with English."

Belle laughed again and absently scratched the cat's head, who looked at her between angry eye slits. He shirked her and leapt back off the table he'd been sitting on to go do cat things.

"Only two days into school and you've got model friends?" she started to walk into the kitchen. "Boy, you move fast, kiddo." Sora dragged Riku after her as she started rummaging through the fridge. He wondered what Belle had meant, 'model'. He wasn't exactly the cookie-cutter mold for an ideal friend.

"Got a project you need help on?"

"Yeah, we've got English essays."

Belle started taking out colorful vegetables; squashes, zucchini, peppers, tomatoes.

She nodded and put the food on a cutting board, getting out a sizable knife and observing the edge.

Her kitchen was a small place, more for cooking than for eating, really, with the old sort of spice shelves that reminded a person what cooking actually was. The walls were just grey, and everything else was wooden and worn out; it was much longer than it was wide, pots, bowls and huge wooden spoons hung from hooks in the ceiling. It was the sort of kitchen that hugged you.

"Riku," she said. "Are you staying for dinner?"

"Oh," Riku said. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been asked to dinner at somebody's house. "Probably not."

"What? Oh, come on! Come on come on! You can't appreciate food until you've eaten one of Belle's meals!" Sora protested, jumping up and down a little in mock-excitement.

Belle blinked at him, half-smiling a wry smile, her eyebrows knit together. "Really? Thanks."

"Yeah," Sora said to Riku. "You her cooking once, and suddenly _any other food_ tastes great in comparison."

"Sora!"

"Wha-_at_?"

"I'm holding a cast iron frying pan is what, and I know how to brandish one of these things." She waved it at him effortlessly.

Sora just stuck his tongue out and smiled at her. Momentarily he looked at his hand. The one with the bandages and all.

"Hey, Riku," he said.

"Yeah."

"Can you - " Sora paused. "Uh, can you wait in the living room? I gotta talk to Belle 'bout something and... I don't want you to feel uncomfortable." Belle paused in chopping a squash and looked at him, giving him a sad sort of non-smile before she put wiped the knife off with a dish towel and placed it next to the cutting board.

"Yeah." Riku shrugged and walked into the room with the shelves and the creepy statues and the smell like jasmine and oatmeal and hot glue. That's what he'd parceled it into - if you ever walked into a room where somebody was eating oatmeal while burning jasmine with hot glue, it'd smell like Sora's foster mom's living room.

But apparently they hadn't soundproofed it.

"Okay, c'mere kiddo, we have to change those bandages," came Belle's voice.

And what was he supposed to do?

"Uh-huh. I just - _ow_!"

"Oh, sorry honey!"

Just casually rap his knuckles on the wall?

"You have been putting antibiotics on it, haven't you?" she asked him as Riku could here the sounds of medical bandages like duct tape.

"Yeah," Sora replied, sounding just a little resigned. "But Dr. Lammie says it'll scar, pretty noticeably. At least, it'll be visible for a while."

'Oh, excuse me, I can actually hear you talking about your recent trauma and subsequent scarring third-degree burn, mind turning it down a notch?'

"You're upset about this?"

"Nah, it's not like I won't be able to use my hand. It's just...you know, what if people ask about it, is all." Saïx slinked back into the living room, making a scant squeak when he jumped up onto the couch next to Riku and sat down next to him, as if they were equals. Disinterested and relegated to this life.

"You don't have any obligation to tell someone something, Sora."

"But...I don't like lying to people."

"So you tell them you're uncomfortable saying!"

"But I _don't_, I just..." Sora trailed off and Riku tried hard, he tried _so hard_ not to keep listening. And he wasn't, it was just that for Riku, Sora's voice always ended up being force-heard.

"You just what, Sora?"

"I guess I don't want to make other people depressed? I dunno, it's just weird. I don't want other people to feel uncomfortable."

"Sora..." Belle trailed off and so did Riku's train of thought.

Dammit, now he was _curious_. He looked at the cat sitting next to him, completely blasé and absently licking his paw.

Shuckin' cat.

Riku wondered when his mother would be getting home. If he ended up staying for dinner (unlikely), he ought to call her to say. He also wondered, vaguely, what Belle actually did for a living - 'inventor' was a vague term. Invent what? That surely couldn't be enough to support a lavish lifestyle.

"Oh! I almost forgot. My coworker - don't look at me like that, I mean a _nice_ coworker whom I _like_ - has tickets to this traveling circus that he gave me. You should take one of your friends."

"When?"

"...euh, bout two weeks?" It was followed by the sound of rustling paper.

"Yeah. Look here, thirteen days from now," Belle said.

Sora was silent for a few minutes before muttering, in French, "..._t- tu ne crois pas qu'il puisse nous entrendre d'où il est, n'est-ce pas?_" Of course, Riku took high school French, and could very easily understand that Sora was _just beginning to realise _that maybe people could hear him from the living room.

"_N'inquiéter pas! Il ne peut pas. Vraiment._" Belle reassured him that of course they were completely inaudible.

"_Um. Il parle un peu de français...donc..._" And Sora reassured her that Riku did, in fact, speak basic French. So if he could hear them...

"O-_kay_!" And then they were visible again, Belle in her sweet blue summer dress and Sora being dragged by his arm the way he'd dragged Riku. Riku noticed a few more things about Belle, like the way her pockets were full of things and how she was the type of person who had her ears pierced and only wore those tiny little golden hoops. Nothing flashy. He wondered where Sora got his fashion sense from; until he remembered the two weren't related. It was hard to remember, what with the same eyes and the same hair and the same pushy, manic behavior.

"You two go up to Sora's room and Sora, don't you dare come back out until you are _bleeding_ English, hear?"

"Yes, mum." He smiled at Riku, one of those 'what can you do' smiles.

It was just before she was about to call them both down for dinner when Roxas called.

* * *

A/N: HAHAHA CANON OF WHAT DO YOU SPEAK OF COURSE SAIX IS A CAT

* * *


	4. I Know Not How To Stand Steady

* * *

**But I Will Someday.**

**

* * *

**

A/N: Before anyone says anything, _yes_, I know that_ Leon Leonhart's last name is Leonhart_, so I'm going to preemptively tell you that when I say _Leon Orcot_ as a passing name-drop non-character in the story that means nothing, _I do not mean Leon Leonhart_.

* * *

"No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous."  
**- Henry Adams**_  
US author, autobiographer, & historian (1838_ _- 1918)_

_

* * *

_I live, I die, I burn, I drown  
I endure at once chill and cold  
Life is at once too soft and too hard  
I have sore troubles mingled with joys

Suddenly I laugh and at the same time cry  
And in pleasure many a grief endure  
My happiness wanes and yet it lasts unchanged  
All at once I dry up and grow green.

- **Louis Labe**, _I Live, I Die, I Burn, I Drown_

* * *

"Sora!"

In his room, lying belly-down on his bed and scribbling furiously on a piece of lined paper with an oddly determined look on his face, Sora looked up abruptly at the sound of Belle's voice. Riku, on the floor, did nothing.

"Yeah, what?" he shouted back.

"Roxas is on the phone for you!"

"Wha-?!" Frowning, Sora slid of his bed and bounded to the door of his room. He hovered by the doorway for a second before dashing back, grabbing a shocked-into-silence Riku and pulling him down the stairs at a breakneck pace, skidding to a halt just before smacking into a coffee table. He let go of his companion, who'd been affronted into stony silence, and ran over to the wall to grab at the phone his foster mother was holding out to him, barely avoiding slamming into her in his hurry.

"Rox?!"

There was silence as the person on the other end answered.

"Hang on - Roxas, hang on, I'm gonna put you on speaker so Belle can talk to you too."

He listened for a second. "Okay." He hit a button on the phone and set it back in the cradle. "Say hi to speakerphone, Roxas!"

_"...hello speakerphone?"_

"Aaand say hi to Belle and Riku," Sora said, grinning and glancing up at Belle, who was setting steaming plates on a table.

_"Hey Belle."_

"Hello, Roxas," she called with a smile, walking back into the kitchen.

_"And hello - um, Riku?"_

Riku didn't say anything. He glared at Sora a little, first, but then he just sat down on the couch and stared at the floor. Sora just kind-of-laughed and stuck his tongue out.

"...Riku says hi back. Oh! He's someone from school and he's helping me with English. So anyways, why'd you call?"

There was the odd, crackling quiet on the other end of someone breathing over a phone line before Roxas responded lowly, _"I was talking to Mr. Orcot about - "_

And it looked like somebody just sucked the happiness right out of Sora. His face fell and his eyebrows went up. "Rox, you've been living with them for ten months, don't you think it's time you started calling him Leon, at least?"

_"...Sora, drop it already."_

It was funny, Riku noted, in a way that wasn't really funny at all, how Sora was just as animated talking to someone on the phone as he was talking to them face-to-face. His expressions were vivid. It was like watching a head-sized soap opera, the way he kept going from elated to disappointed. And right now it looked like he'd just found a dead squirrel in the road. Resigned and sad and kind of helpless.

"Y-yeah, sorry, Roxas. I know," he frowned and sat down on the arm of the couch nearest to Riku and worried his lower lip with his teeth. "What were you saying?"

_"Well,"_ and Riku observed, quietly to himself, that Roxas' voice was a little deeper than Sora's. _"They said that - you know how we were talking about meeting up over April vacation?"_

"Yeah-huh?"

_"Well, they really can't get out of work then since Leon's a police officer, but they said that if you can fly up here you can stay with us all week. I mean, if you want. And Belle can come too..." _he trailed off.

_I mean, if you want_. Boy, this Roxas guy sounded almost as lonely as Riku when he said that.

"Roxas?" Belle walked out of the kitchen again, holding a pitcher of water and addressing the speaker on the cradle of the phone.

_"Yeah?"_

"I'd love to talk to you more about this, but we're about to have dinner. We'll call you in a few hours, alright?" Her finger hovered over the 'end call' button.

_"Yeah, sure. Bye."_ Before anyone in the room could reply to him, though, there was a _click_ and the empty dial tone of a dead phone line. Belle turned off the phone and smiled up at the two boys. Sora had, in the time he was talking, jokingly tilted to the side like a doll and was leaning against Riku's shoulder. He laughed and stood up.

"C'mon, Riku, dinner!"

Riku didn't remember agreeing to eat dinner.

Besides, he wasn't hungry. He was sick of this place and sick of Sora and that stupid naivete he had.

But Riku knew when to pick his battles, so he just sighed the sigh of a man pressed upon and sauntered over to the dining table to sit next to Sora in front of a pile of roasted vegetables and pasta.

And after that, well, he hadn't thought it was possible to run home that quickly.

* * *

When he opened the door of his aluminum-shingled white house, Riku Tepes peeked his head in before the rest of his body, to check and see if anyone was visible. The kitchen was dark, all the chairs were pulled neatly in around the table and the drying rack was empty. Riku closed the door behind him with the slight sucking sound of the rubber seal and the buttery metal click of the latch, kicking off his sneakers in the shoe tray.

He walked down the hall, wondering when it got so dark outside; it was far past twilight. The hallway was completely dark and few of the rooms it lead to were lit; those that were leaked yellow light onto the carpet outside. Riku stopped by his mother's office, which doubled as his parents' bedroom. You had to make the distinction, and you always said it was her office before it was her bedroom. That's what she did in there.

And she was in there now, sitting at her desk with a phone sandwiched between her shoulder and her head as she typed furiously on the computer.

"That's what I'm saying, if we bring it up during the meeting - "

Riku snorted. "Hey, mom," he said, quietly, watching the back of his mother's head bob up and down as she talked animatedly. She didn't hear him, of course, but he didn't really mean for her to, so it's fine.

He just shakes his head and walks back to his own room, wondering if anyone in his house would notice if he never even came back at all.

He doubted it. He was his own responsibility, like his dad said.

* * *

He didn't know why he was suprised to be having a dream about Sora again.

Riku Tepes was having a dream about Sora again, and Sora was in it.

It wasn't one of those story dreams; it was just one of those dreams where things happen, things that aren't stories because it wasn't one of those story dreams it just had one thing that happened and happened and sometimes happened again.

Riku was in his house only it wasn't _his_ house but it was _a_ house and he was pretty sure it was where his brain went when he had dreams because it was too yellow and white and from the 1960s to be Riku's house, and the stairs were covered in carpet and none of Riku's stairs were covered in carpet so why did he like them so much?

He was standing at the bottom of white stairs topped with yellow, fuzzy carpet and at the top of the stairs, there was Sora.

Only, he still wasn't Sora. He wasn't covered in stripes or anything, but he wasn't dressed right. He had armor on his shoulders and belts on his arms, around his chest, over his pants and waist and a jacket that didn't actually look possible. He had a key in one hand, a giant house key with a serrated edge and a groove and a little serial number up on top, only it was a _big_ serial number since the key itself was so big and so _weird_ because Riku knew people used keys for things like opening letters or making scratches on walls as well as opening doors, but he'd never seen a letter big enough for a key like that or a door with a key hole that big, and he didn't see why a person would want to make such a big scratch on a wall _anyways_ and -

"Riku, Riku!" Sora giggled and waved the key around. He was sitting, just at the top of the stairs, and the stairs were so _narrow_ that he really shouldn't have been able to wave the key around but he was just _doing_ it, anyways, like that didn't matter. "Come up here, Riku!"

"I can't," Riku replied.

"Come up here, Riku!" Sora said again. "Come say hi!"

Riku shook his head furiously and crossed his arms. "I _can't_, I _can't_, you idiot!"

Sora stopped waving the giant house key around and frowned at him from the top of the stairs. "Should I come down there, then?"

"_No_." Riku glared at him. "Besides, you'll puke."

"I won't puke!" Sora stood up suddenly, much taller than he really should seem and much taller than _anyone_ should ever seem, really, in a dream, and with one angry sideswipe embedded the house key in the wall. Reciprocal cracks snaked through the plaster with splitting noises. "I'll be fine! Don't you dare say that!"

"Go away, wouldja?" Riku said. God, that was such a stupid word. 'Wouldja'. What kind of a jerk says 'wouldja'? Riku turned around to leave.

"Hey!"

He passed by a window with curtains covered in pictures of butterflies. It was snowing outside.

"Hey! Come back!"

* * *

Riku woke up just as he was sliding off the bed and falling to the floor. _Thunk._

"Shit," he said.

* * *

Riku used to like Fridays. Not only did school end half an hour earlier, but he didn't have history, and one of the five periods he did have was a study period. It was like somebody had specially engineered Fridays personally for Riku Tepes, just taking all the good parts of a week and putting them on the same day.

But then that somebody made _Sora_ happen. After all, Riku didn't have history with Sora. One of _precious few_ periods, it seemed.

But today was Friday, and they had science first, in which Sora sat next to Riku while Dr. Zexion talked on and _on_ about the lab they were going to do that morning.

Riku felt about Dr. Zexion much the same way a corn snake might feel about a milk snake - the former being venomous, the latter imitating its coloration and being harmless. If you'd asked Dr. Zexion about milk snakes and corn snakes, he would explain this to you using small, short words so you'd be sure to understand. But if you'd asked him if, were the corn snake to understand the free ride the milk snake was getting from its reputation, the corn snake would be kind of pissed, he'd look uncomfortable, say it was a silly question and shouldn't you be getting to class about now?

By the time they actually _got_ to the lab, about half the class had been wasted, but it didn't even matter. All it was was looking at onion skin cells under a microscope. The room was filled with the quiet buzz of friends talking with friends, making a halfhearted effort to do the work, and then cracking jokes about it until they'd gone onto a completely different subject.

Oh, except for the nerds. They were discussing cloning. Onion cloning.

Riku wondered why it was he didn't hate the nerds yet. He didn't like them.

"Riku? What're you looking at?" Sora poked him in the side.

"Jeez!" Riku grumbled, jerking away with conditioned reflex and glaring at his lab partner. "Seriously..."

"Oh, come on," Sora grinned at him, tugging him closer to the microscope and the glass slides. "Better me as your partner than anybody else."

And, as much as it pained him to admit it, he was horribly right. Just looking at the other people in the class, well... well, at least with Sora, he didn't look all hurt and offended when Riku gave him a death glare.

(Actually, yesterday, when Riku had death glared him in English, he'd remarked on Riku's "pretty eyes." Riku would've smacked him if he'd actually cared enough.)

One table over, though, and Zack and Kairi the wonder team were managing the most spectacular screw up in scientific high school history.

Coincidentally, Riku had never heard so many terrible "What does this button do?" jokes about a microscope, and that was saying something, since Riku passed seventh grade science.

And as Sora - who was, actually, surprisingly adept at setting the onion skin in the slide and adjusting the microscope - was focusing the lens, there was a loud and distinct _CRACK!_ from the table over.

"_Shit_!" Zack shouted, jumping backwards. He'd crushed the slide with the microscope.

But it wasn't until he swore that Dr. Zexion's head shot up from the laptop he was working on, his eyes narrowed viciously.

He was even wearing gold rimmed glasses - the only reason being, Riku suspected, to pinch the rim and look just over the tops of them intimidatingly as he was doing now.

The whole class was silent as Dr. Zexion stood up, very slowly, and walked to a glass showcase of rocks and minerals. He took a small gold key out of his pocket and unlocked the case, drawing out what looked to Riku like a baseball-sized lump of hard brown...well, rock, and then he closed the case again, stone in hand. He approached Zack with his face completely blank, and perhaps the barest hint of a sadistic smile.

"Mr. Fair, do you know what this is?"

Zack coughed a little and obviously tried to resist cowering. "N-no, look, I'm sorry about the swearing it's just - "

"This, Zack, is a _coprolite_," Dr. Zexion told him, holding it out. Zack took it hesitantly in his own hand.

Somewhere behind him, one of the nerds' eyes bugged out her her head and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Do you know what a coprolite is, Zack?"

"...no."

Dr. Zexion smiled a snakey smile. "Well, don't you remember learning the tests in middle school? Color, hardness, dissolvability, taste and all that?"

"Ye-ah..." Zack said carefully. It was sad, sort of, watching it from where Riku and Sora were standing. Like watching a mouse in a room with nothing but a mousetrap and rapidly closing in walls.

"Let's do them now, shall we?"

So Zack scratched the rock with a penny, and rubbed it on a piece of paper, and identified it as 'non-metallic'.

"What about taste, Zack?" Dr. Zexion smiled at him again.

And oh, poor Zack, who assumed that no public school teacher would really have him put him mouth on something _too _bad, no, he just went ahead and winced and licked the rock anyways.

"Does it taste like anything? Salt? Iron?"

At this point the excited nerd in the back leaned over and whispered something to her friends, and then all of _their _eyes bugged and a few of them bit their fist or finger to keep from, it seemed to Riku, _cackling_.

"Uh, it just tastes like a rock, Dr. Zexion," Zack said, grinning weakly when a few brave souls in the class giggled.

"Do you know what that is, Zack?" Zack shook his head again.

Dr. Zexion just took the rock back, very carefully. "That, Zachary, is fossilized - " he said, using small, short words so Zack would be sure to understand, " - _shit._"

* * *

Walking down the stairs and across the hall to English, Riku was still seething a little about what had happened in science. It wasn't that he felt sorry for Zack; he'd gotten what was coming to him. Licking dinosaur poop was one of the more mildly cruel and unusual punishments in Dr. Zexion's cell biology class. But that was just it - Dr. Zexion had looked so _smug_ when he did it, like it was Zack's fault nobody had ever told him what a coprolite was.

"Hey, frowny McGrimace, what's wrong?"

One thing Riku hated was when he had two classes in a row with the same people. You left the same classroom, followed the same route, and often entered the next classroom at the same time. It was awkward, especially if you were Riku and therefore trying to avoid the other person as much as possible. This meant no eye contact, walking on the opposite side of the hallway if you could, and long strides.

But then there were those few that chased him anyways.

He glanced sideways at Sora, who was walking next to him with an earnest smile.

"What?"

"You look pretty royally pissed off right now, you know. I mean, more than usual - "

"Hey, Sora!" shouted someone from a little ways down the hall. Sora looked away from Riku for a few seconds to wave hi back and widen his grin. Riku took this chance to speed up his walk, darting in between bodies of stalling students. He was moving fast enough that his open button-down shirt actually flapped behind him. He was a man with a mission.

Of course, that didn't mean Sora couldn't sit next to him when they _did _get to English, and _damn_ all these two-person desks. Riku cast a glance sideways at the messy brown hedgehog on the top of Sora's head as the kid leaned over his backpack, pulling out his English binder.

"So?"

Riku didn't say anything, he just opened his notebook and wrote down the homework on the board. If he hadn't been in school, he would have taken out his music player and turned the volume up. Not that that had stopped Sora before, but he felt he could condition the response if he did it enough. Like with a puppy. If there was anything Sora reminded him of, it was a tactless 3-month-old puppy. There was only so much naivete a person his age should have. Sora probably still thought it was cool to go up in tree houses!

"Is it because of the thing Dr. Zexion did to Zack? 'Cause Zack didn't look too upset about it afterwards." He smiled at Riku and flicked him in the shoulder; Riku drew his arm closer to his side.

"It's not about - I don't feel _sorry_ for _Zack_ of all people. I just don't like Dr. Zexion," Riku said coldly, never making eye contact. He didn't want to be pestered about this.

"Ye-ah, but admit it, you thought what he did was unfair and it _pisses you off_!"

Riku turned his eyes to the ceiling because he _didn't need this_ right now. "I just - ugh, _Sora_..." he said, setting a record for most exasperation in a monosyllabic grunt.

Sora just laughed and turned to the front of the classroom, chewing on the inside of his cheek absently. He didn't say anything else until Mr. Reno walked into the room with a flannel shirt, questionably tasteful jeans and a cloth-bound book.

"A-_hem_," he said decisively, sitting down on a stool in front of the whiteboard. He surveyed the kids in seats with only mild dislike.

"Well, I was going to give you time to work on your essays in class today, since your homework is to come up with a rough outline, but then it wouldn't be _homework_, would it?" And then Riku snorted and leaned back in his chair, because this he had noticed about all people: they loved to lord information over others. He saw it everywhere, in kids his age, in adults, toddlers, anyone. The conversations always went like this:

_"Hey! You will **never** guess who asked me out!"_

_"Omigawd, **who**?"_

_"You seriously would not believe me if I told you."_

Or it was

_"Did anyone tell you about what happened to the ex-prime minister of France?"_

_"Uh, no."_

_"Oh, you should totally listen to NPR, they were talking about it on this one quiz show."_

Or even

_"You know the deep-sea barreleye fish? With the clear foreheads?"_

_"Yeah, I guess."_

_"Did you hear about what they discovered about how they find food?"_

You always asked people if they knew something if you already knew they didn't. You withheld information just because and Riku _hated_ that, he hated how people used anything they could to assure themselves of their superiority. He'd removed himself from the whole vicious, biting world as soon as he realized this, watching from the sidelines as shallow and petty people chased each other in circles with nipping little teeth.

With a shake of his head, Riku's mind was back in his second-period English class with Mr. Reno, the redheaded man with a barely concealed blue streak a sailor would be proud of.

"And I could give you a free period and let you all terrorize each other, but then it wouldn't be _English_ class, would it?"

And to his considerable surprise, Sora turned to the side, caught Riku's gaze and rolled his _own_ eyes, followed by a muttering of "Wouldya get on with it already?" directed at their teacher. He leaned his elbows on the desk.

And so Riku's interest in he of the impeccable smile was magnified twofold. He had _mood swings_!

With this renewed interest, he began to observe the other boy with mild non-disinterest.

(It occurred to Riku that rapidly changing his opinion of Sora from 'He's a naive and immature idiot' to 'He's a relatable teenager my age' was, in itself, a bit of a mood swing, but he attributed it to hormones and thought nothing more of it.)

So once again he noticed the medical bandages covering three of the fingers on Sora's hand - which had been changed by Belle, yesterday, when he was in earshot - and he noticed that one of them was just low enough to expose some of the wound underneath. But the angle of the cloth prevented him from actually seeing whatever it was on Sora's hand that warranted honest-to-goodness legitimate hospital bandage instead of a band-aid. So Riku shifted in his seat, half-standing and then sitting down again on his foot, all while Mr. Reno droned a speech about the contents of their essays that sounded suspiciously prepared. And with that slight change in position, he could see -

- oh _God_.

He'd known it would have to be bad, obviously - it required daily bandage changes and medical tape and he was pretty sure he'd seen Belle with a tube of some prescription ointment or whatever, but it really was _different_ when you saw third-degree burns in real life.

The glimpse of skin Riku'd caught looked sticky and swollen; it was a sort of sickly mix of yellow and red and he could sort of see veins in the white parts and it was risen and horrible and black in places and purple in other places like somebody had just torn it right off of Sora's finger and it was trying to heal and _could_ something like that even heal, oh _God_.

He blanched and clapped a hand over his mouth, staring down at the desk and trying to rid the images from his mind. That was only a tiny part of one of Sora's finger and _three_ of them were bandaged. He remembered Dr. Zexion talking about how of all the parts of the human body, the hands were covered in the most nerves, that they were the most sensitive, and Riku couldn't imagine...

He looked back up at Sora, who met his eyes again and grinned at him, obviously unaware as to Riku's discovery. But Riku had never been a very good liar (it wasn't like he'd had many people to lie to, anyways, and the constant indifference didn't really require any trying), so when Sora looked at him and saw his wide eyes pricked with maybe-sympathy-almost-tears, his happy face deflated. His mouth grew small and part-open, his eyes got a little watery and, maybe just a little, his lips quivered. He blinked and clenched his jaw in a way that looked kind of practiced to Riku, and stared at him like it was Riku's fault he'd found out.

But he remembered the conversation he'd overheard.

_"It's just, you know, what if people ask about it, is all. I don't want other people to feel uncomfortable."_

The next second he was shifting uncomfortably and watching the wall to his right; Riku was on his left. His uninjured hand was curled into a tight ball and Riku watched his whole body tense up angrily.

But Sora was looking at him again in the next second, and staring at him with his hopeless eyes the color the sky should be, searching for a reaction.

And Riku did something he hadn't done for a really long time. He looked right back at Sora, and he smiled for him.

It wasn't a big smile or the kind of smile that stuck with you, but it came from Riku to Sora and it said just enough to get Sora to smile back.

"So anyways," Mr. Reno was saying, "Everyone come sit on the floor."

And so Riku and Sora's little world was broken (funny, how many little worlds happened around Sora,) and Riku looked back up at his English teacher with a mix of curiosity and horrible nagging fear.

There was nervous chuckling in the classroom, the sort of chuckling that happened when the teacher had made what was probably a joke, even if it wasn't funny, which people laughed at for fear of retribution.

Mr. Reno grinned, and said to them cheerfully, "Oh, that's right, it's really funny!" he laughed. He stopped laughing. "Do it." He pointed at the floor in front of him. And as the chronic giggling dwindled and confused looks multiplied, he smiled at them and held up the book.

"Be honest. Whensa last time you idiots got read aloud to?" A little part of Riku's faith in humanity died every time his English teacher made a grammatical error. "Kindergarten?" Mr. Reno continued. "First grade, maybe?"

So with a little bit of somewhat-gentle urging, kids started to get up and sit cross-legged on the floor, or lie down and rest their heads on their backpacks, or lean on each other and against desk legs. After a few seconds of observation, Sora smiled and stood up, taking his dream demon sweatshirt with him, draped over one arm. He sat down on the floor just in front of their desk, folding the sweatshirt and putting it on the carpet. He looked straight up and grinned at Riku, who was watching him with vague distaste and hadn't moved.

"Hey Riku, come down here! We can use my sweatshirt as a pillow."

_"We can use my sweatshirt as a pillow"_? What did he think Riku was, a boyscout?

_Looked like the skin had been torn right off Sora's finger..._

He shivered and looked at Sora again, wondered if he still felt pain from it, if he was in pain right now and just couldn't show it. Or was just too used to it.

But Riku knew that pity was the worst way to treat any kind of pain, so ignored that and acted on autopilot. Autopilot meant _no_, you didn't _share sweatshirt pillows_ while a "grown-up" read stories out loud to you.

"...I'm good."

Sora, who had been lying down and leaning on his elbows, sat up on his hands with his mouth twisted up in mock anger. His eyes shot wide for a second and he winced, lifting the bandaged hand and mouthing some French cuss. But he blinked a couple of times and looked at Riku again with the exact same mock-anger of a scrunched up mouth he had before and a mischievous glint in the crinkles of his eyes.

"Aw, c'mon. Indulge yourself for friggin' _once_," he laughed. Lucky, about half the people were still being seated, so they weren't drawing any attention. In fact, a couple more similar situations were going on near and around them. Riku rolled his eyes.

"I was never big on circle time in elementary school," he deadpanned.

Sora rolled _his _eyes. "Then come down here and fall asleep."

"Sora..." ..._drop it_, he didn't say out loud. It was silly for this to become an issue.

The boy on the ground raised his eyebrows. "Riku Tepes, I will come over there and _sit_ on you. Don't think I won't."

All Riku could do was stare at him disbelievingly, somewhat shocked that anyone could say that so seriously. And it didn't look like Sora was saying it in a joking way, no. Riku had no doubts that, should he fail to comply, Sora would stand up, walk around the desk, and plant himself directly on Riku's lap with a completely straight face and, in reaction to any weird looks, would look puzzled and probably make something up about how it's traditional French culture to sit on the lap of someone of the same gender.

"Okay! Jeez, fine," Riku grumbled, standing up and coming around to sit next to a smiling Sora. He glared back. He felt like Sora had made a big deal out of something that shouldn't have been, but Riku hated to draw attention to himself. And as socially inept as he was, even he knew that having the new French kid in class sit on him wasn't the greatest way to avoid attention. There was also the fact - and Riku wasn't the type to lie, not to him_self_ - that he often didn't do things for the first time without a deal of outside encouragement.

The thing was, though, he couldn't remember the last person willing to give him enough encouragement to get him to do something.

Which was...kinda sad, if you thought about it, if you didn't think too much.

So that was probably why he just snorted and rolled his eyes, laying down on the sweatshirt pillow after Sora so that they faced each other. Sora made a funny face at him (to fill the silence, presumably), giggled, and then hushed when Mr. Reno started up again.

"Okay! No, 'okay' does not mean 'keep talking with no regard to the teacher', it means shut up _Yuffie_. Hey! D'you want a nap time or don't you, yo - you kids." He cleared his throat awkwardly. Riku suspected Mr. Reno of being a reformed slang-user. Or, partially reformed.

"Um..." he glanced at the book in his hand once, then frowned and looked at the bookshelf to his side, scanning it. He plucked something from the shelf and weighed one book in each of his hands, curiously. "Okay," he said after a while. "We've got two things, since it just occurred to me that some guys will get all objecty at the one I grabbed from my apartment this morning. So." He shifted backwards on his stool.

"Choice A," he said, holding up the cloth-bound book. "Peter Pan. None of this Disney crap, I mean the actual novel by..." he turned the book around and peered at the cover. "...J.M. Barrie. Or," he held up the book he'd gotten from the shelf, "One of those Lemony Snicket books. I don't know which one this is. The one with the lions, whatever."

In the time it took his class to pick a book, Riku completely forgot about what was theoretically going on around him. He was sleepy, and it was second period.

He stared dazedly in front of him, not really at Sora's face but not at anything else, either. And fifteen minutes later, neither of them had moved, still staring at each other and relishing how they had a good forty-five minutes to go until they had to move again. Riku had forgotten - had he ever known? - how wonderful it was, having a story read out loud to you. You could tune in and out whenever you wanted. You could imagine the story as it happened, or you could just lie there and stare at a set of faceted blue circles and let the words drizzle over your body, wash over you like standing near the spray of a waterfall, _plink, plink, plink._

After a while, Sora started to wiggle around a little, trying to get more comfortable, bringing his gauze-wrapped right hand up and in between them, resting it on the carpet.

It didn't feel like he was _taunting _Riku, exactly, no. It wasn't like he wanted to gross Riku out with his burned hand. Riku didn't know that, strictly, but it didn't really feel like taunting. It was more like...

Like _I don't have to pretend this isn't here now_. Like Sora needed somebody to know that he _wasn't_ always alright. And Riku, being frequently not alright himself, could respect that about a person, even if he didn't know if he liked it.

That was the thing about Riku Tepes. If he was going to try a new thing, he needed a lot of outside encouragement.

"Hey," Sora said in something that was below a whisper but still, somehow, a noise, "Wanna see it?"

Riku blinked at him in mild confusion until it occurred to him Sora meant his burn. He stared at Sora in mostly-disgust.

Sora stifled a giggle and snorted at him. "I mean -" he cut himself off, glancing up at their teacher. "- no, seriously. Can you help me change my bandages after school? It's basically impossible by myself, and Belle doesn't get home until late tonight. It's really easy, it just that I can't do it...you know, one-handed."

"Uh..." Riku stalled. And then the time for actually answering a question sort of slipped away because the words were still falling into the air, cool and smooth, _plink, plink, plink_. He just sort of walked his index and middle fingers through the spaces of Sora's splayed ones on the carpet like feet, absently, watching them the way you watch a TV program that isn't really interesting. He smiled to himself sleepily, his eyes half closed.

(And later that day, in the lunchroom, he would overhear Sora talking to one another guy who joked with him about their "faggoty" behavior, all in good humor, of course. It wasn't like Riku was upset about it, but he would readily admit that he thrilled a little when Sora when silent, stared at the kid for a few seconds, and just walked away without saying anything else.)

* * *

"Hey, you don't mind that we always go to my house, do you?"

Riku looked up at Sora who had, until this point in the walk to his house, remained blissfully quiet. So quiet, in fact, that Riku had started to listen to his mp3 player with both earbuds in.

Riku had specially bought, online (even though paying for shipping was _Hell_ in the Destiny Islands), the kind of earphones that block all outside sound. He couldn't even hear cars on the street when he walked down the sidewalk. He loved his headphones.

"What?" he asked, casually pulling one out of his ear and looking over at Sora.

"You know," Sora said, still walking. "That we always go to my house."

Riku licked one of his teeth, more for the sake of just doing something before he spoke than anything else. "Ah, I wouldn't say _always_ when this is...the second time."

Sora just laughed and kept walking, turning down the grisly dirt road that led to the crazy house.

* * *

Riku was standing in front of Sora, who was perched on his kitchen counter swinging his legs back and forth and looking at Riku.

He was holding a roll of medical bandage in one hand, and a third degree burn in the other, and he was grinning a madman grin that Riku had learned to fear. It was the grin he'd had on when he'd guilted Riku into eating dinner with him, and the one he'd worn earlier that day in English on the floor.

"Okay," he said, holding out his injured hand. "So if you could help me take this bandage off, that should be hard, and then I'll help you wind the new one around and try to walk you through the parts you have to do. I'm right-handed, but I've gotten better with my left in the last year-ish, so I should be able to do some on my own."

"Ah..." Riku swallowed. He understood why Sora was doing this, naturally. Joking around about it must make it easier to bear, and besides, he wasn't making up having to change his bandages. He got it, really. Twice the people makes half the burden. He respected it. It was just...

...Riku was kind of squeamish. Seeing other peoples' injuries always led to that horrible spine-tingling shiver and made him go weak in the stomach. And that was just things like loose teeth and scabs.

Sora smiled at him sidways. "Don't worry," he said. "It's not really gross. I mean, it kind of is, but you don't really register it as being human skin, so it just looks weird. And, uh, don't worry about hurting me." He didn't say that it wasn't going to hurt him, or that he was used to it. He just told Riku not to worry about it.

It made him want to try really, strangely, uncharacteristically hard _not_ to hurt Sora, if only because Riku hated living up to realistic expectations.

And he only meant about hurting him physically, with the bandages and all, Riku didn't do symbolism. Symbolism happened in novels you read in English class.

So when he started down at Sora's wrist, which was held out to him, he was very careful. He untucked the end of the bandage and carefully began unwinding it. It wasn't burned down at the wrist, so when he pulled the elastic white gauze off of there all that was revealed was slightly reddened skin. It was when he got to the palm that he met a little resistance.

When he felt the first tug, Riku slowed down. He could just see the horrid puffy red and yellow and black swelling. He took a deep breath - he might have heard Sora take one, too. And when he started to pull the bandage off it made this terrible _wet_, _sticky_ noise like stepping on a mud patch. The bandage came out blotched with a sickly jaundiced tone, and when Sora sucked in a breath and stifled some kind of noise, Riku stopped and looked up at him.

Sora grinned at him, and looked like he was trying to find something to say. Strangely enough, Riku found it first.

"So..." he said, trying to do what Sora did, trying not to think of it as skin. It was just crusty red and yellow blotches like - like the surface of Mars. Sure. "Who _is_ Roxas, anyway?"

"Huh?" Sora looked at him with genuine curiosity.

"Roxas. You were talking with him on speaker phone on Tuesday night, right?"

Sora grinned, but Riku didn't miss how his eyes were beginning to get watery. "Oh, right! I forgot you were there when that happened. Roxas is my brother, he turns fifteen in June."

Riku raised his eyebrows and nodded, pulling the bandage away a little more. He didn't miss how Sora's whole arm tensed when he did that, but at least he was done with the palm of his hand. Just the three fingers to go. He tried to think of other things to ask about Sora's little brother.

There was the obvious.

"They separated you?" Riku frowned, wet-and-sticky-noising some of the bandage off Sora's pinky.

"Yeah," Sora shrugged. "He was fourteen and I was sixteen. He got adopted before I even got let out of the hospital. I mean, it took like three months, but still. Fourteen is cuter than sixteen. He wasn't even in high school yet."

"...oh," Riku said quietly, removing the last of the bandage. He took a mental step back and wished he hadn't; Sora's whole hand was exposed and _oh_, it made him want to cower. He'd seen the latest Batman movie, he'd seen Half Face or whoever, but a movie didn't show you anything like what a real burn was. It didn't show you the _smell_ like burnt hair and rubber and blood. It didn't show you the cracked scab and the slimy wet puss.

He blanched.

"...yeah," Sora said again, very quietly.

"Sorry," Riku said. "But how...?" He trailed off, picking up the roll of unused bandage.

Sora took it from him and peeled the end off, pressing it against his wrist. "Oh," he said. He took a big breath. "I was coming back late from a friend's house only Roxas was also sleeping over at somebody's house or something, and anyways when I tried to open the door to the kitchen it was really really hot so that probably gave me like a first degree burn? And the kitchen was on fire. And...yeah."

He looked Riku right in the eye, and then he looked away quickly. "Sorry," he mumbled. Sorry, Riku assumed, because he hadn't meant to give so much away - or sorry because he had meant to.

"Nah," Riku said. This kid, _this_ kid, he decided, _this kid_ was amazing. To go through what he'd gone through - about which Riku was still foggy - and to come out the other side letting almost-strangers see his scab took the kind of bravery Riku had given up on. He smiled a little. Even if the end result was kind of whiny and a little too pushy.

It wasn't that Riku Tepes never changed his mind. He just didn't like it to be changed for him.

"Ah - " Sora winced when Riku got to his pinky with the bandage; he'd been going too tight.

"Oops," Riku said, unwinding it.

--

A few minutes later, with Sora freshly wound up again and the old bandage carefully disposed of, he hopped off the counter and grabbed a couple of prescription pill bottles from the back of it. He tipped one pill from each, popping them without water.

He turned to Riku and smiled. "Antibiotics," he said. "It's prone since I don't have a skin graft."

Noticing the lack of a 'yet', Riku followed him into the living room with a question. "Why not? Don't you need one?"

Sora turned on a record - just soft jazz this time, Riku noted with relief - and sat down on the couch, soon followed by the cat.

He didn't say anything for a little while. He sighed. "At first, I refused to get one. I don't really remember why, you know? And then I was supposed to come here and I wanted to get settled before I did. I'm getting one soon."

"Oh," Riku said, and he didn't press it. Because even though at this point it was apparent that Sora wanted to tell him these things...

...he didn't really want to know. They _scared_ him, to be honest. He claimed to be world-wise, sure, but when he found there actually _were_ people who lost their parents in toaster-oven house fires, and who got burned, and who got separated from the only family they had left and were expected to keep _going_, it gave him a funny feeling in his gut. Besides, Riku was the type to not tell somebody the whole story. He treated other people that way.

They just sat on the couch and listened to Ella Fitzgerald croon her way through "All of Me", and when that song finished Saix had curled up in Riku's lap (because it was warmer), and Sora giggled and muttered something like "_Ella, elle l'a_!", which even sounded dumb in English.

He probably should have seen that Sora was on the verge of something. He could have seen the next Friday coming, if he'd asked an easy question. But he didn't know if Sora was really okay until he wasn't.

* * *

Thus I suffer love's inconstancies  
And when I think the pain is most intense  
Without thinking, it is gone again.

Then when I feel my joys certain  
And my hour of greatest delight arrived  
I find my pain beginning all over once again.

_-_** Louis Labe**_, I Live, I Die, I Burn, I Drown_

* * *

A/N: Yeah. The coprolite thing _seems_ cracky, sure, but it's based on real life. Not...not _my_ real life, but still. This century, at least. I mean, I think.

Two things. One, a request, two, some boring information.

First thing: I need to know the names of some of your favorite poets. Alive or dead, male or female, any nationality. If any of their poems are readily available online, that's fantastic, but if I can just find them in a poetry anthology or individual published work at the library that's totally fine._ Technically_, it's for a project, but I'm always up for more poetry. Mmm, Louis Labe.

Second thing: I'm going to try very hard to update on March 14th, and if I do it will be short and kinda angsty and kinda fluffy. If I don't, I'll have an excuse prepared.

* * *


	5. I'm Nobody! Who Are You?

* * *

**Are you -- Nobody -- Too? Then There's a Pair of Us!**

**

* * *

**

A/N: (ignore first paragraph)

I think I'm...speciesist. Or...family-ist? Not genus-ist. But I was reading this article on _Skiffia_ livebearers, and the author concluded by urging people to reconsider their opinions on members of _Poecilia_, since it's common to think of fish like guppies as just food for cichlids, adding that he sometimes feeds baby cichlids to his livebearers. And my first thought when I read that was _"What? You can't do that! Baby cichlids are gonna be...you know, **adult** cichlids when they grow up!" _But then I realized that I have, for some reason, no problem with baby livebearers being used as live food for cichlids. Does this make me a fish elitist or something?

Okay, I was gonna post this tomorrow, but I've decided to post it today and post this one-day fictionpress thing tomorrow. See y'all later.

* * *

"Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own."  
- **Logan Pearsall Smith**  
_ (1865 - 1946)_

* * *

There was one thing that Sora hated, more than he'd ever hated anything else.

He hated to wake up smelling blood.

It had only happened twice in his life, and in a row. The day after the fire, and then the day after that, both in the hospital. He still couldn't decide which day was worse, though, not that he really thought about it that much.

The first day, he opened his mind before his eyes. Still groggy, at first he thought he was in his room - he was sprawled out the way he always was, with his forearm across his face to keep morning from coming (it never did, and Dad always snorted and yanked the blankets off anyway, even on _Saturday_). But he definitely smelled blood. He knew the smell of it; everyone does. Tangy, like metal, but a little more potent. It wasn't a mystery smell.

And over the blood smell, there was the musty bandage smell of medical casts, and something like bad meatloaf.

(He'd find out, when he left his room four days later, that this was because he was a floor above the cafeteria, and near the staircase.)

It took him a few seconds to remember why he was in a hospital with his hand throbbing dully and not at home, wishing for a snow day in March. But he did. He remembered coming home to a fire, and trying to get in through the kitchen and burning his hand on the toaster oven, and blacking out. He was surprisingly calm about the whole thing, considering. He wondered where his family was.

So he eventually sat up in bed, being careful not to lean on his hurt hand, and looked around. The room wasn't too bad, for a hospital. The walls were a frosty green, and his sheets were white; there was a little TV in the upper corner and an IV stand next to the bed.

He was alone in the room. There was nobody in the plastic chairs against the wall, no nurse checking his stats, no stern police officers waiting in the corner to question him. Only Sora.

He didn't know what to do. He didn't really want to watch television, and he was thinking in a bemused mix of French and English.

He just sat ignorant in a hospital bed, with his hands folded neatly. He had to wait, alone and confused and, yet, not, already sort of knowing but still not knowing and able to blame it on his dramatic teenage mind. He had to wait for almost an hour before the nurses made their rounds, and somebody noticed he was awake.

They made a small sort of fuss over it, and one of them went and got his designated doctor. They were all sort of awkward about it, because nobody wants to tell a kid he's an orphan - whose job was that? Not the doctor's. So the doctor just told him that he would probably need skin grafts for his hand, and Sora nodded and thanked her.

After a few hours, somebody official showed up - Sora couldn't remember if it was the police, or social services or child protection or whatever - it was hard, really, to remember who was telling you something when you were so focused on what they were saying.

But a blond man showed up, knelt by the bed and explained slowly that Sora's parents had been killed in an accident due to some short circuit or something in the toaster oven. His brother, Roxas, was fine, but since he was uninjured he'd been put directly in foster care.

(Their grandparents were either dead or in homes, and both of their parents had been only children. They'd joked that because of that they'd wanted to have a huge family, but once they'd started raising the Wonder Boys Roxas and Sora they realized they clearly couldn't handle any more of the people they seemed to be making. It had been an ongoing joke in the family.)

The same would happen to Sora when he got out of the hospital. Foster care.

Of course, he knew they were just going through the motions - Roxas had a chance, still, because he was only barely fourteen and still cute. But Sora was sixteen, a firmly established bratty teenager who would, of course, want to learn to drive and snub his foster parents, and be of legal age in too short a time. He knew he was going to spend the last two years of his childhood life essentially homeless.

He briefly entertained the idea that somebody would adopt both of them, claim they didn't and couldn't separate brothers, and at first Roxas and Sora would rely on each other for support, then as they grew to know their foster parents would create a whole, if slightly dented, family.

But life isn't Hollywood, and Roxas came to see him a week later with red eyes (but not crying, never crying, never Roxas) to tell him that a family had gladly taken him in, but they could only take Roxas. So they made the best they could of it, and Sora made Roxas give im his new phone number and address and tell him about the family taking his brother away, smiling as much as he could. They tried to joke about it, and promised to visit over the holidays and to call or email every day.

And that was it, Sora thought. Get out the hospital and then...that's it. Use his half of the life insurance for college when he turned eighteen.

He didn't know which day was worse, though - the first day, when he'd had to hope for an hour, or the second, when he tried to and knew he couldn't. After the second day he learned to sleep with his arm by his side, so he only woke up smelling musky, too-clean blankets.

He refused the skin grafts, maybe because he didn't want to let go. Probably more, though, that he wanted somebody, some adult, to step up and overrule him and maybe prove that he wasn't so...abandoned.

And then Belle happened. She'd made everything so much easier. She didn't ask him to talk about it, never talked about "crying it all out" or "purging himself of the bad emotions." Sometimes she'd just glare at him, sit him down and tell him to cry for a little while, but she stopped after the first few months, when he'd started to act normally again.

But he still remembered the abandoned feeling, especially that first day.

That was three hundred and sixty-four days ago. Maybe three hundred sixty-five, he didn't remember if there was a leap year.

But the point was that...that today was - ...well, it was last block on a Friday, at least.

It was math class, but luckily their teacher had a policy of letting them goof off on Fridays if they got ahead, which they usually did in honors classes. Of course, goofing off with Mr. Leonhart generally involved math worksheets in which you solved for the punchline to a pun joke, but they were never hard and he didn't expect you to turn them in.

Today was different, though. Just Sora's luck, really.

"So," Mr. Leonhart said. "Who knows what today is? I heard somebody say it - yep. Pi day, right? March fourteenth, three one four. I thought we'd do some easy worksheets on spheres and circles, and maybe something else if you finish those early." As he spoke, he started passing out the aforementioned sheets.

In the last row, Riku rolled his eyes and rested his chin in his hand. He'd thought that, at seventeen, maybe he was past _math puns_. "What happened to the glass blower who inhaled? He got a _pane_ in his stomach!" Disgusting. He knew - he could see, in everyone's movements - that everyone else thought so, but they weren't willing to admit it because everybody liked their math teacher. He gave easy tests and light homework and taught well. But nobody liked the worksheets. There was always dead silence when they were being passed out. Not that Mr. Leonhart noticed, or anything.

"Mr. Leonhart?" Riku looked up, because it was Sora who had spoken, and noticed that the boy three seats up and two seats to the right had gone completely rigid, sort of hunched over his desk, looking at the paper. Riku had just gotten his; he glanced at it. All it said was "Happy Pi Day - March 14th!" on it in what were probably brightly colored letters before being photocopied, and beneath it some problems on circle areas and sphere volumes. Not exactly interesting stuff, but he didn't see what was so upsetting.

"Yes, Sora?"

"...can - " his voice cracked, and Sora tried again. "Can I go to the bathroom?"

Mr. Leonhart glanced at the clock, which read a few minutes past one. "Yeah," he said, "Quickly, okay?"

Sora nodded complacently. He grabbed his backpack and slung it over the shoulder, walking as quickly as he could without running out of the room.

"Sora, don't take your - " Mr. Leonhart stepped halfway out into the hall, calling out for the him. But he stopped, frowned. He walked back to his desk slowly, drumming his fingers on the table thoughtfully for a few seconds while the rest of the students either waited for his response or whispered amongst themselves.

And it was true what they said, Riku noticed. That gossip spreads faster than wildfire. He had no doubt that Monday would bring hysterical rumors about Sora, though he didn't know what they'd be. That Sora was secretly a drug addict (you know, since he was French) and had to go snort the cocaine in his backpack in the bathroom. That he'd had to puke because he had a rare medical condition that made him puke when he saw circles with numbers on them. It would be something stupid, Riku knew, it was always something stupid; he knew that about gossip.

But finally Mr. Leonhart spoke.

"...Riku," he said carefully.

"Yeah?" Riku looked at him nervously. Sora had this kind of contagious sadness; just being near him when he was thinking about things like his old family made Riku feel sort of funny in his stomach. It wasn't, strictly, that Riku was being empathetic, but maybe that Sora was hyper-emotional or something.

"If Sora doesn't come back by..." Mr. Leonhart glanced at the clock again. "If he's not back by one ten, could you go and see if he's alright?"

Riku shrugged. "Yeah, okay," he said. He admitted he was worried, but anybody would be worried if they saw the unabashedly happy one start to have what looked like a breakdown.

A few people turned around the look at him, because it wasn't really a secret that Sora liked to hang around Riku (not that it was interesting enough to be gossip, anyways), so naturally Riku _must_ know _exactly_ what was going on.

He didn't say anything, and at one ten he caught the teacher's eye and left the room, heading for the boy's bathroom.

When he pushed open the swing door, the first thing he noticed was Sora's backpack, next to the trashcan overflowing with brown paper towels. It wasn't a bad bathroom, but every high school bathroom has graffiti about sex or drugs or catty insults in the stalls. This one had one brick wall, too, which just made it seem more depressing in addition to have an olive green color scheme.

Sora was hunched over one of the sinks, bracing himself with a hand on either side of it, staring at the drain.

Riku came up, leaning his back against the other sink. "Hey," he said quietly.

Sora glanced up at him and tried to smile. But he...couldn't. "Hey," he said back.

He went back to staring down into the sink, breathing quietly, and neither of them said anything for a little while. Riku didn't know what to do, he didn't know how to deal with somebody else's pain. He didn't know anybody who'd lost a person, _really_ lost a person, not a grandparent they barely knew or a dog that got run over. He knew that he couldn't even begin to understand, but he wondered why it was that Sora was freaking out about it now.

But to his credit, Riku tried. He took a step closer to Sora, but when he put his hand on his back it was like he'd hit a switch in the other boy.

"I thought - " Sora said, and cleared his throat. "I thought that...I'd be okay. I mean, I kept trying to convince myself that today was just another day, and the calendar shouldn't matter, and I was doing so _well_ but...but..." he took a big, shuddering breath and Riku started to massage his back, awkwardly. He didn't know if he was helping at all. Grief was such a funny thing. There were some people that had to tell anyone who would listen in order to make it better, and others that hoarded it like a horrible secret.

Sora licked his lips. "_Pi day_. I come to school praying that nobody will notice me, and that I can act normally, and I almost do but then all of a sudden..._c'est l'anniversaire de la mort de mes parents, et vous dites que c'est **Pi day**_?!" He sobbed once and wiped at his eye.

"Hey, Sora," Riku said quietly. "It's okay. It's okay." He just rubbed Sora's back systematically, up and down, up and down. The cloth rolled under his hand. He felt so clueless. And...ignorant, and juvenile, because he couldn't say what people normally said, he couldn't say "I know," or "It's normal to cry," or "You'll be fine," because he _didn't_ know. All he knew was that Sora was warm and shaking a little as he tried to breathe. God, he was so clueless. Who decided it was okay to let him be the comforter?

Sora turned around to look at Riku with his eyes red and puffy, but no tears rolling down his cheeks. He shook his head. "_Je le sais_," he whispered. _I know that. _Maybe he couldn't handle speaking English now, Riku thought. Maybe it was too post-trauma for him. Maybe he missed living in a French-speaking country with his parents and his brother and his friends and his faith in the world. Because it sure didn't look like he had any of those things now.

He shook his head. "_Je_ _suis désolé_," he said. _I'm sorry_. "_Je...je ne peux pas..._" _I can't_.

"I know," Riku said, touching Sora's shoulder. Sora put his hand over Riku's and hiccupped a little smile, staring at the floor.

"I just," Sora said, in unaccented English. "I guess it doesn't really make a difference, or anything. It's just that now it's..._officially_ a year, you know? Like it's...sinking in, all over again. Like it's all...real, now. My parents have been dead for a year. A _year_. It's cemented in time. Like there's...no...going back, or something. I don't know," he took a calmer breath. "This probably doesn't make sense." He stared up at the ceiling, crossing his arms and blinking and swallowing.

Riku shrugged. "Nah, it does," he said, glad to see that Sora was pulling himself up, because Riku wasn't sure how he could have helped.

Sora looked at him again, a little calmer, and really met Riku's eyes. Riku hated it when people met his eyes, because it felt to him like putting two mirrors facing each other. Only you were one of the mirrors. It felt weird, because even though he knew they didn't, and he hated people who said they did, a person's eyes looked so much deeper than just things for seeing.

Sora broke eye contact first; he leaned forward, resting his head on Riku's shoulder and squeezing his eyes shut. And that little, slightly spiky weight almost broke Riku in two. It was so personal, and so sad, and so sort-of-desperate. It wasn't that nobody ever touched Riku (heck, it wasn't even that _Sora_ never touched Riku), but it was never really emotional. But Sora was just like that, Riku figured. He'd just gotten in the kid's hyper-emotional way, was all. Nobody leaned on Riku Tepes for support.

Sora pressed his forehead further into Riku's shoulder and took another shivery breath. "I'm sorry," he said. "Just - just give me a second, okay? Just...give me a second."

Riku went one better. Sort of. He put his arms around Sora's shoulders, and hugged him awkwardly. Sora grabbed his shirt but he didn't say anything. They just stood there, two boys, hugging in a bathroom, the only sounds breathing and the slow drip of a broken faucet.

Riku was mostly sure that he couldn't possibly be doing the right thing, but Sora seemed to be improving, so maybe he wasn't screwing up, either. But after a few minutes, he started to glance at the door. Nobody had come in yet, but that didn't mean they weren't going to, and he couldn't guarantee it wouldn't be a homophobe who'd see two guys being emotional and, well, everyone knows what they say about gossip.

"Sora," he said quietly. "I don't...I mean, you can tell me if you think otherwise, but I don't really think you should go back to class today, okay? I mean, it's last block anyways, so..."

Sora let go of his shirt and stepped back, shaking his head to clear it. "Yeah, I - no, yeah, sorry. Didn't mean to go all angsty on you there, sorry. But...yeah." He looked at his backpack in the corner and laughed a warbly laugh. "Actually," he said, "I was planning to just stay in the bathroom for the rest of the period and then go straight home, anyways. I can't...go back in there." He looked at Riku again, with just a little bit of a Sora smile there again, and for some reason Riku felt his own eyes prickling. But he couldn't start crying, too, because two people crying was too horrible. One of them crying and the other one holding, that was progress. That was okay. Besides, he barely ever cried anyways.

--

He walked with Sora to the door of the classroom, and left him waiting outside of it. Letting them see a teary-eyed kid after he's run off to the bathroom would only serve as fodder to the rumor cannon, Riku knew.

It was funny, thinking about it; all of his stupid problems seemed just that: stupid. Here he was, worrying about a B minus on a math test, and there was a boy on the other side of the door like the little blue engine of sadness: _"I think I can, I think I can, I have to because the world won't stop turning."_

So he bore the unabashed stares for the both of them, walking into the room and right up to Mr. Leonhart's desk, leaning one hand on the surface and leaning in to whisper in his ear so that no one else would listen in. He told his math teacher that Sora was upset about the anniversary of a tragedy in his family, and that celebrating Pi day had upset him. He explained to his sometimes socially clueless teacher that Sora was in no state to come back in the room, and that it would cause a fuss. He asked, on behalf of Sora, if he could go home early. It _was_ last block on a Friday.

Mr. Leonhart sighed and looked at the students.

"...alright," he said at length. "I'd prefer if he called his guardian first, but...well, I trust you two. Losing someone is hard." He smiled at Riku. "I'll write a pass for you and..." he leaned in towards Riku conspiratorially, grinning. "Just don't let anyone see you leave."

"Ah - " he laughed the obligatory laugh, and asked. "...me too?"

Mr. Leonhart licked his lips absentmindedly, scribbling on a piece of scrap paper. "Yes," he said. "I think that's a good idea." He handed the paper to Riku. "Why don't you go grab your stuff?"

So Riku did.

He packed up his stuff and still ignored twice as many stares as he would have gotten, and ignored the girl next to him who whispered a "What's wrong?" in that falsely-concerned voice Riku hated, because she didn't care. She was curious. Curious and vicious, like they all were, like barracudas and vultures.

He slung his backpack over one shoulder, keeping the note scrunched up in his hand. Sora, outside, had barely moved, just leaning up against the wall with his hands in his pockets. One of the pockets of his backpack was partially unzipped; Riku could see the corner of a video game magazine sticking out of it. The cover looked familiar, so he wouldn't be surprised if it was a game he owned - oh, hey. One of the smaller pictures was definitely familiar.

_So that's why Sora was dressed like that in my dream last week_, he thought absently. He was relieved, sort of, to know that his mind didn't just spontaneously dress people in leather and belts and strapped giant swords to their backs. It was probably the hair that triggered it, the protagonist had spiky hair -

"Riku?"

"Ah, yeah," he muttered. "Let's go. Mr. Leonhart let me go too."

"Yeah?"

So the walk to Sora's house was silent and awkward, because Riku knew he couldn't start listening to his mp3 like usual, and Sora wasn't about to say anything. He wasn't crying any more, which was wonderful because Riku couldn't deal with crying people, but he wasn't talking, either.

Almost there, he stopped walking when the had to cross the street that led down to one of the beaches on the island. It wasn't a big beach or a nice beach, really; it was all rocky and the only animals people ever found were periwinkle snails or a particularly nasty species of invasive crab. Sora didn't know that. He just stopped right before crossing the street and stare-stare-stared in that _way_ that he stared at things.

Riku cleared his throat. "Wanna...go swimming?" he offered cluelessly.

Sora shook his head. "Nah, but..." he glanced back at Riku and headed straight down the road. Riku followed after him kinda-hopelessly. Sora stopped, just leaning against the side of the building closest to the beach without having to actually step foot on the boardwalk. When Riku caught up with him, he had this stupid Sora-smile on his face.

"Um...you okay?" Riku asked hesitantly.

"It's not the first time I've seen a beach or anything," Sora told him. "But the only one I ever visited was at least a couple hours' drive away from Caen - I lived in Caen, it's in northern France - anyways, it took forever and a half to drive up to this really gross beach. It didn't have sand, or anything, just these huge boulders," he held his hands far apart to try and emphasize the hugeness of the boulders. "And the water was always black or green and freezing cold, and the tide pools only ever had green slime. One time there was one with a dead fish."

"Yeah?" Riku said. "Gross."

Sora just shook his head and laughed. "Uh-huh. I just wanted to see a real beach. I always thought I'd like them."

"And do you?"

"Yup. Maybe I'll spend more time here over summer."

"Mm."

"Wanna come with me?" Sora looked back at him and grinned. Riku laughed awkwardly and nodded his head towards the side of the street. "Let's go."

He wondered what went through the mind of someone like Sora. Even on a bad day he was shiny.

* * *

When they got to Sora's house (it had gone unspoken that Riku would stay with him until he was feeling better, because Riku Tepes was a lot of not-so-good things, but he had always been and would always be stable-minded, and so good in crises), Sora went right into a room that branched off the main living room. Riku was fairly certain they passed by Belle's living room (which had, strangely, only a single twin bed) before they came into a room with a television and a couch and an adjoining bathroom.

"Ah," Sora dropped his backpack on the floor and sat on the arm of the couch. He seemed to have relapsed into his withdrawn, quiet state as they'd finished walking back home. "I'm gonna go take a shower. Movie collection's over there, or channel flip for ten minutes before you realize mid-afternoon TV sucks," he laughed a little, "But...yeah. Make yourself at home."

The fifteen minutes for which Sora was in the shower, the only sounds Riku heard were the rush of hot water and, once, a _thud_ noise like punching a pillow. But for all he knew, Sora just knocked over a towel stand or something; he forgot to wonder about it.

He turned off the television when Sora walked back into the room, slightly damper.

He sat next to Riku on the couch, crossing his legs and leaning back, staring at the grey-blue walls. He didn't say anything, just worried his lower lip with his teeth and fidgeted, occasionally glancing at Riku nervously. He'd probably started to think about something in the shower, just to distract himself from his own personal, PG-13 version of a No Good, Awful, Very Bad Day.

"I - " he swallowed, and sat up a little straighter before blurting "I think I might be gay." Only he said it much faster than that. It sounded an awful lot more like "Iinkimiteblgay".

Since Riku had met a maybe-gay person about as many times as he'd met an orphan, he calmly replied "Huh?"

"Ah, um," Sora looked vaguely flustered as he plowed his way through slippery words. "I - I don't really know, it's just a hunch or something, but I've been thinking about that lately that like maybe I'm starting to figure it out and it was triggered by stress, only I didn't know who to tell and I figured now was a good enough time because you don't really seem homophobic and if you are I can just blame the confession or whatever on, um...on this being a really bad day, for me, so I'm confused but - but I had to tell _somebody_ - ..." He trailed off, and it was obvious even to social delinquent Riku Tepes that he was expected to interrupt.

He shrugged. "Okay."

Sora stared at him. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Riku leaned back and started to channel-flip again. "Okay." He'd be kind of a hypocrite if he thought Sora was weird or creepy, wouldn't he? He had had that..._dream_...

_Tu m'aimes, Ri-**ku**?_

It was the only dream he'd ever remembered so well, and it hadn't really been all _that_ innocent at all.

"It doesn't seem...weird, to you? Or abnormal, or anything?" Sora asked, his hands shaking a little from anxiousness or excitement - maybe relief, Riku wasn't a mind reader.

"Nah," he said, settling on a shark documentary. "I mean, it's not like you consciously _chose_ to be gay or not-gay."

Sora looked like he deflated again, like that day a week ago when Riku'd seen his injured hand, but this time he didn't seem broken. He seemed relieved, definitely relieved. A little disappointed, like he'd expected more of a reaction (from Riku the ice man? Unlikely.).

"That's it? I mean, I could be wrong, you know, about it..." he licked his lips and shifted on the couch, making it squeak a little.

"Well, you'll figure it out," Riku told him. He paused for a second. What was that expression, that one his French teacher had pounded into his head? "_T'en fais pas._" He looked at Sora out of the corner of his eye; he was trying not to giggle.

"You've got a terrible accent," he told Riku, settling down onto one of the pillows. "I mean...seriously."

Riku rolled his eyes, but he didn't really feel any dislike. They both watched clips of fish and listened to a gravelly male voiceover for a few more minutes (Riku more than Sora, really, who still seemed to be expecting some sort of opposition to his sudden confession), before Sora spoke again.

"It's funny, though," Sora muttered. Riku looked up at him. "I mean, when you get - get put in that situation, and everything, it's really easy to see why people turn to...to God, you know? 'Cause at that point - " he swallowed. "At that point, when you know that you can't do anything, and _nobody _can do _any_thing, you have to do _something_, right? So you...you let God take over and...because I guess it's really hard to think that - that that can happen to somebody and that there's no way of fixing it."

Riku didn't know how Sora had gone from possibly coming out to talking about God, and religion, and death so suddenly. Riku felt so...outside. Separated, from Sora's grief, and the knowledge of what loss felt like, of any connection at all. He was ostracized from that kind of pain, too, he realized. He wished he could follow the little electrical zaps that rivered Sora's mind, and he wished he could know where that mind went when he was being real quiet and looking at a beach he'd never seen before.

But he couldn't, so Riku Tepes just put and arm around his friend and let Sora cry silently.

* * *

Next chapter: Skin grafts! Circuses! Axel?

A/N: No joke, I have exactly 8 deviations and 13 messages on my deviant art account right now. I'm totally keeping it that way forever.

* * *


	6. What is Defeat? Nothing But Education

* * *

**Nothing But the First Step to Something Better.**

* * *

"Bodhisattva recovered, except for one leg,  
In the front, which atrophied.  
So if you asked him to beg, he'd sit,  
And could only offer the one that didn't work,  
As if to say 'Here, take this from me - it hurts.'"

- **Taylor Mali**, _Bodhisattva_

_

* * *

_

Sora was kind of an awkward child.

Not socially, certainly; that much was obvious. But when he slept he looked like a bunch of sticks tied together with string. Riku knew this because, at the moment, Sora had somehow fallen asleep basically on his lap. He didn't remember the pillow being put on his lap, nor did he remember Sora putting his head on the pillow, but he figured it must have happened in the three hours they'd been in the television room. Somewhere between the Egypt documentary and the Nile perch documentary, maybe (they were unsurprisingly hard to tell apart).

Sora was an awkward sleeper, in short. He sort of curled in on himself, with one leg tucked under a couch cushion and the other resting on the arm. He made these innocent little "Mnam, mnam," smacking noises unless he was dreaming, when no part of his body moved except for his flickering eyelids. That happened for a few minutes when Riku was being documented at about the introduction of some big fish to some lake in Africa. Other than that, he nuzzled the pillow.

And that was all well and cute, really. But the simple fact of the matter was that in that time Riku had calculated that there were about_ three layers between his crotch and another boy's face_. Just pillow, pants and boxers.

Which was awkward, to say the least. That was maybe, what? Three inches, four if it was a thick cushion?

That was _uncomfortable_ and entirely too...well, he wanted to say gay. Which seemed like some kind of moot point now.

But Sora's face had been red and blotchy from crying until just a little while ago - and Riku knew, he really knew that crying was one of the most tiring things a person could do. Once you've had a good sob you're _spent_; and if you can you should take an aspirin and go to bed. Sora just did the next best thing. So Riku didn't want to wake him up yet. Maybe in a few minutes.

This was how Riku Tepes did compassionate.

Luckily, Sora was just waking up, anyways. He made one final smacking noise with his mouth, sitting up and digging at his eye with a finger.

With one eye still closed, he looked at Riku and smiled. "I fell asleep?"

Riku nodded.

"Uhn," he muttered, laying his head back down on Riku's lap. Riku had turned off the television a few minutes ago; he wasn't sure entirely why. He did things like that, sometimes. He'd just been staring at his reflection in the shiny, shiny glass and thinking about the warm weight on his legs. Sora was kind of sad, when he was asleep.

Of course, that didn't make it okay for him to consciously put his head _back_ on Riku's crotch. _That_ was not acceptable behavior regardless of how much emotional trauma he'd suffered. It just wasn't.

But he looked like sleepy dog, and Riku kind of liked dogs. His eyes were half open; he stared at the black TV screen for a few lazy minutes before sitting up again finally, his hair all spiked to one side because he'd fallen asleep with it wet.

"Aw man," he laughed, getting off the couch. And there was that same feeling of rapid cooling in Riku, when a heat source is taken away. It wasn't so bad, it just felt funny.

Sora went up to the TV, staring at his reflection and poking at his hair, which looked like it'd been swept to one side. "I look like Roxas now!"

"Your brother?" Riku asked, leaning back on the couch and running a hand through his own hair.

"Yeah," Sora said, coming back to the couch and sitting down with a squeaky sort of flop. "Y'know how my hair just sorta sticks up everywhere?"

"Nn."

"Well, Roxas' is just like..." he stared up at his own hair for a second, a few bits of which were hanging down in front of his face. "It's like..._whoosh_." He made a sideways motion across his head with his hand, with maybe a little swirling. "He looks kinda like a rooster from a fancy hair salon."

"Oh. Weird," Riku said, because he didn't really know what to say, but it seemed like the right reaction. Sora smiled at him, which further confirmed his suspicions, so Riku took a shot in the dark at what seemed like the right thing to say again. "I have two brothers, but they both have pretty normal hair."

"So you mean it's not like all glowy-angel-white?"

Riku looked at Sora directly, mildly confused. "What?"

"Like yours." He pointed to Riku's head.

Riku made a sort of face to himself, of almost-disbelief. _Glowy-angel-white_? Had Sora called his hair _glowy-angel-white_? Riku didn't really think about his hair often - he wasn't a _girl_ - but when he did he just thought of it as white. Maybe shiny, but not noticeably shiny. It was a genetic oddity in their family. His brothers, his father, his grandfather, and all the men in his family had premature white hair; maybe it was a Y-chromosome thing.

Why was he thinking about hair, again?

"Um, _glowy-angel-white_?" he asked Sora, who just nodded and grinned at him.

This struck Riku as another "Riku-Tepes-and-his-sexy-hips" incident, which was to say, making fun of his appearance to garner a reaction.

Which was...good, right? Because Sora was acting like himself again? As far as Riku could tell, anyway. Which wasn't...very far at all, really.

He'd only known Sora for about a month. That wasn't very long at all. It wasn't long enough.

Well, that made it sound like Riku wanted to get to know him well enough to make the judgment call and, really, he still wasn't sure about that. Because it was obvious you didn't have much of a friendship with someone, when you periodically lapsed into silence with each other. When the only thing you thought about around them was what to say next - little conversation-starters for conversations that might last ten seconds. Just grasping at anything to break up the silence.

Sora just shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so," he said. "Definitely never seemed normal gray to me."

"Hn," Riku grunted, effectively ending that thread of dialogue. Riku's grunts, like his stares, tended to finish things rather than start them.

Not that that stopped Sora, who was apparently a mouth on legs.

"Anyways," he started. Riku turned on the television.

He noticed that was the only way with some people. Some people got that you weren't going to talk to them when you put in your earphones, some when you noticeably turned up the volume in the earphones, some when you only replied in smiles and nods. Some needed outright interrupting. And Riku Tepes was never the type to beat around the bush.

They were still playing the documentary about Nile perch. And Riku was pretty damn sure that there wasn't anyone in the world who wanted to know that much about fish. But he'd rather learn about the commercial value of big-game fish in poor African communities than he would to hear -

Sora laid back down on the pillow and closed his eyes.

Riku made a sort of protesting noise, to which he responded, "Y'know how when you're still tired, your eyes kind of sting, even when you close them?"

"Yeah."

Neither of them said anything for another little while, because documentaries make good background noise for thinking. Riku figured Sora had a lot of thinking to do. Or sleeping. He couldn't tell which one the kid was doing.

Sora sat up, after a little while, leaning on his elbows and with his head not so horribly close to Riku's crotch.

"Hey," he said, scooting back until he was leaning against the back of the couch. "There's this painter," he said, "Norman Rockwell. You know who Norman Rockwell was?"

Riku shrugged. Norman Rockwell was one of those names that kind of sounded familiar, but was just generic enough to be mistaken for practically anything else.

"No."

"Well," Sora said, watching the television screen. "He was this guy who painted all these pictures, like for the war bonds posters and stuff for World War II, and they were all of like normal everyday life. You know, a guy with a wife and two point four kids and a dog and stuff, who goes to work every day and has a home-cooked meal or whatever - I mean, not like that, really, but I'm bad at describing things. But you know what I mean?"

Riku licked his lips and settled further into the couch. "Yeah, I guess." He had a pretty good idea of where all this was going, but from where he was it didn't look like a good idea. Sora was like a ferret who kept on almost backing out of a hole and then turning around at the last minute and burying himself deeper. Did ferrets dig holes? He didn't know.

Sora smiled. "I think - I mean, that's obviously not going to happen, right? For me, I mean. Not exactly. But it's not like I don't have _anything_, right? What I have is just...just less built-up, right? Like I have all the building blocks. For Norman Rockwell."

"Yeah?" Riku questioned, asking him to continue obligatorily.

"Yeah. I've still got my brother, and I've got Belle, and she's like my big sister, or maybe a little older. And I bet I could beat a best friend outta you. And there's the cat, and - I, I think it can still be just like Norman Rockwell. It'll just take...work." He laughed a little and closed his eyes again, but now there were four layers between Riku's crotch and another boy's face.

One of them was Sora's arm, which really wasn't much better, but it was _something_ and that helped.

He heard a sort of loud, angry noise outside, like a giant metal trashcan on somebody's lawn had fallen and was rolling down the driveway. Thunder, probably.

Riku hoped it didn't start raining. He may have lived on the dry side of the island, which meant dry heat most of the year, but all that meant was that when it rained, it _poured_. And not dramatic-funeral-depressing-realization-background-scenery pouring, it rained like the clouds wanted to kill somebody. Like they were fed up with all the people. Sometimes Riku expected to see an ark out on the ocean when it was raining, an ark sailing away from all the hopeless humanity again and leaving Destiny Island to drown. Again.

But anyways, the sound of the thunder had evidently covered up the sound of Belle coming home. There were the usual door opening and closing sounds, the metallic clink of keys being put on a table and the sliding of shoes being discarded. Riku didn't move. This was bound to be awkward.

There was a quiet knock on the door, like knuckles. Sort of gentle and careful, like she didn't want to interrupt anything.

"Hello?" she called. She really did have a nice voice. It sounded like she was singing even when she was just talking.

"Hey, Belle," Sora called back surprisingly quickly. For a kid that looked like he'd been almost asleep, he replied suspiciously quickly. Riku stared down at him and narrowed his eyes. Sora just sat up and rubbed his hand over his face obliviously and looked at the door. "What is it?"

"Can I open the door?" she asked.

Which seemed like a weird thing to say, especially from a guardian to a teenager. She must have known Riku was in there, since his shoes were by the door and his backpack was next to Sora's (though, wait, were their backpacks in here or were they in the hall?). Why would it not be okay for her to open the door? What did she think they were doing, smoking pot?

"Yeah, sure, come in," Sora said, but Belle just opened the door a crack and peeked her head in. She was wearing another dress, a blue one with a white shirt underneath it and a blue ribbon loosely tying her hair together. She really was a different kind of pretty than the kind of pretty Riku usually saw. He saw high school girls trying to cover up all their human bits with mascara or lipstick or tight clothes, or do the opposite and try to convince themselves they didn't care by wearing giant shirts and messy ponytails. Guys did similar things. Even if it wasn't as obvious, it was just as sad. Riku hated that about people. How _sad_ they were when they didn't even _know_ it.

Belle just sort of _was_. She didn't hide her nice face or her body, but she didn't flaunt them. It was like the difference between a factory-whitened, photoshopped supermodel "sexy scowl" and a spontaneous grin scrubbed clean and human.

And now that he thought about it, Sora was kind of like that too. Sora wasn't pretty. He just was.

"Oh, I don't need to come in," she smiled at them. "But Sora, can I talk to you outside? It'll just be a minute, I wanna get back to work so I can finish up a project."

"Oh," Sora stood up off the couch, "Yeah, sure." He walked out into the hall.

Before closing the door, Belle smiled at Riku. Her eyes crinkled a little around the edges. "Don't worry, I promise I won't steal him for long. You guys are watching a movie?"

Riku licked his lips. He was sitting down, sprawled across the couch with a remote in his hand while the owner of the house was standing in work clothes talking to him. It was awkward being more comfortable in a person's house than they were. He felt like he should stand up and start cleaning up after himself or something.

"Uh, yeah."

"And you're sleeping over, aren't you?" At that, Riku found his eyes caught by Sora's, standing just behind his foster mother with his hands in his pockets. He didn't look desperate, he didn't mouth "please." He just looked at Riku impassively, like it was a test. But maybe it was just the way he was looking at Riku that made him nod. "Yeah, I guess so. But I have to call my mom."

"Alright, you can use the phone as soon as we're done, okay?"

Riku nodded again, and Belle closed the door, turning to face her foster son.

"Sora," she began, looking at him. She was still a little taller than him, but that could have been the heels. He wasn't a very tall kid. "You know I love you, right?"

_Oh_, Sora thought. _Oh._ The conversation with Roxas had started the same way.

_"Sor, you know I love you, right? You're my older brother...it's just..."_

"...okay," Sora said quietly. He didn't know what the bad news was, but he knew it was there now. Maybe she couldn't support a child. Maybe she didn't want to any more.

"Oh no, sweetie!" Belle laughed. "You look like you think I'm going to kick you out! It's nothing like that!"

Belle was so good at that. Telling what he was thinking.

"Oh," Sora took a deep breath. He'd felt that same crushing weight he felt sometimes. His hand stopped shaking. "So what is it?"

She scowled. "Well, it's not really good news, I guess. But it's nothing horrible."

"So?" Sora whined. "Just tell me."

"Well," Belle sighed. "You know child services still checks in sometimes, to see how you're getting on?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Well, Sora...they think - and really, I've been thinking this myself for a while - about your hand..."

Sora looked at his hand. He'd just changed the bandage late last night. It wasn't hurting too badly.

"You want me to get the skin graft or whatever, so it'll heal right instead of getting all scarred?"

Belle nodded, and sighed when she saw the way he was looking at her. "Sora," she said, "I know you don't like talking about it. I _know_ that, but that doesn't change the fact that you can't keep going like this. It's either surgery now, or lots of court-mandated therapy and then surgery later."

Sora stared at her for a few long seconds, and she just stared back like she was daring him to blink.

It wasn't that he didn't know that. But he'd gotten _used_ to it. Gotten used to only using his left hand to eat meals, and gotten used to changing the bandage everyday. Gotten used to hiding that hand around acquaintances so they didn't feel awkward. Used to using it to garner sympathy from the guy on the other side of the door. And he didn't want to go back to a hospital, not _ever_.

Belle smiled, after a while, and put a hand on his shoulder, massaging him with her thumb and making comforting noises.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay, we'll - talk about it - just...not now, okay? I mean, Riku's here, and it's Friday and - " he swallowed. "It's just been a - a bad...day." He looked right into her eyes, to see if maybe she'd make the connection.

Belle opened her mouth, but she couldn't seem to talk for a long moment. "Yes - oh, yes, of course. Sora, I - "

"Yeah, Belle," he muttered."It's okay, don't worry."

She sighed through her nose, squeezing his shoulder. "I know it's hard, sweetie. Having to make all these big changes, one after another without having any time in between to adjust. It sucks, okay? I get that, and I'm sympathetic towards - "

"Okay!" Sora snapped, then pinched his lips together with his eyes wide. "S- sorry. But, I never said I wouldn't...I'm gonna do it, okay?"

Belle made an exasperated noise, rubbing her eyes with her hands. Outside, he could hear rain pattering on the roof and the ground; a car passed by with a _whoosh_ and, somewhere far away, an ambulance screamed. But Belle just tapped her foot, trying to figure out the best way to say what she wanted to say. Sora wondered if it was a natural maternal instinct, because his mother had done the same thing whenever she was trying to have a serious discussion with him. Especially when he wasn't listening.

Belle shook her head. "I know," she whispered, pinching the bridge of her nose. "And I know you mean it and you think you'll do it, but that's because it still seems far away." Sora wanted to interrupt, wanted to tell her he _wouldn't_, he wouldn't change his mind, that he realized -

"What about when you're in the hospital, getting wheeled into an operating room?"

Sora looked at his socks, then the carpet, then the door behind his foster mother.

_And then he wakes up, and nobody's there. The room is empty and it smells like meatloaf and soap. Something is beeping. What a funny beeping noise. The room is empty. He knows there's something he's not remembering, but the room is empty and nobody's telling him what to do, and he feels sick. He feels like he's going to throw up. Why is the room empty?_

He didn't even want to _think_ about that. Everything seemed jaunty and weird and moving too fast.

And she just snorted and took a step back, crossing her arms. "Sora," she said quietly, "Like it or not, you're still a minor, and it's my job to take care of you."

...oh.

"And I want you to know that I have no qualms - look at me," she interrupted herself harshly, grabbing his chin and staring him right in the eyes. "_Look_ at me, Sora."

Look at you? Yes. Look at you, because nobody's paying you to say these things. You're not a part of a system that sees me as just another nuisance.

"I will have _no_ problem overriding your decision if you back off, you got that?"

Oh God, thank you.

"Yeah - yeah, okay, but can we...just, talk about it tomorrow? Please?" he stared at her imploringly. "I promise we'll talk tomorrow." He twisted his good hand in his shirt, feeling up and down at the same time.

"Yeah...yes. I'll let you go back to your friend now."

Sora smiled at her, and they hugged, and she kissed him on top of the head and it was okay.

This time, though, Riku hadn't heard a word of what they'd said except for the "_Look_ at me" bit, and that could mean anything. So when Sora opened the door and walked back in, sitting cross-legged on the couch, he didn't say anything. Sora looked hyper-emotional again, and that made him nervous. Riku was _bad_ with emotional, really bad. He tended to make things worse.

"Oh!" Belle opened the door again, leaning inwards to catch their attention. "One more thing. Sora, can you turn to a news channel? Somebody told me that they've issued a - yup," she said when Riku flicked the channel away from public television. Every other channel was one of those "emergency news interruptions," claiming a flood warning and that people should be staying indoors.

"I'll be okay," Belle explained, "My office is a ten-minute walk away, so I'll just take an umbrella. But I don't want you boys doing anything dangerous, so don't go down to the basement and be careful around electronics."

Sora grabbed the blanket draped over the back of a nearby chair and wrapped it around himself. "Yeah, 'kay."

Belle snorted and raised her eyebrows. "That means no computer. Got it?"

"Uh huh," Sora said.

"And you'll have to feed yourselves."

"Yeah, okay," Sora grumbled, wiggling the fingers of his right hand and staring at the bandage absently. But the funny thing to Riku was, he kept staring at it. He turned his hand around to look at his palm, held it up to the light. The cloth rustled a little.

Belle closed the door.

Riku Tepes wasn't really big on starting conversations. Mostly because he often have an opportunity; after all, most people who talked to him started them themselves. And finished them the same way. And partly because when he was sitting quietly with a person, he didn't see why it couldn't just stay that way. He didn't want to start conversations. If somebody wanted to talk that badly, they could initiate it.

The funny thing was, though, that he was curious about what had happened to Sora to make him look the way he looked. He looked far away again, like he had just before switching the subject a few hours ago. Running along little Sora lines of thought that took him places Riku didn't get.

Because he felt awful about it, really, he did, but Sora was _interesting_ because he was traumatized. He _knew_ what he was talking about, he wasn't just mimicking reactions he saw on TV, he _got_ it. Something about Sora with the funny-shaped hair was authentic in a way that seemed just broken enough to be an actual human. And Riku'd just...never encountered that in a person, before.

The point was, he didn't know what to say to a person he didn't want to piss off. It was a depressing realization, that that stupid kid from a couple weeks had been right, that he _couldn't_ just turn on social-butterfly syndrome when he needed to. That people actually learned these things.

And Sora was stupid then, wasn't he? At least to Riku. He hadn't been the little blue train of sadness, then, he'd just been the new kid at school who had yet to learn that Riku Tepes didn't like fake people and could find more problems with them than Holden Caulfield on a bad day. So to Riku, Sora had just been annoying and hideously normal. And uninteresting, except for a few of the things he'd said.

Riku wondered if it made him shallow, to like a kid because he was in a bad circumstance. Because angst made him worth studying. Like Riku couldn't be satisfied if Sora was just a normal, insightful kid with two parents and a brother and a dog, because if he'd had those things he wouldn't have _counted_?

And not for the first time, Riku started to feel a little disgusted with himself.

But Sora just kept staring at his hand and wiggling the fingers and frowning, and Riku changed the channel to one of those dramatic teenager shows. He didn't like those. People always got to say exactly what they wanted to say exactly the way they wanted to say it. And it seemed like every single thing they wanted to say fit their words exactly; never struggling and never - he was over thinking things. But it just bugged him. How there was no sincerity.

Because saying what you wanted to say to a person, and having them understand you perfectly; it was like finding a tree that was ten meters tall, down to the millimeter. Sure, they _happened_ in real life, _sometimes_, but it was always a fluke. Nobody was sitting down and writing down how tall a tree would get. Even God didn't have the time.

There were a million imperfect trees and a million misunderstood sentences for every ten meter tall tree, Riku figured, which was why he didn't want to ask Sora what was wrong. Because he didn't know how to say it without sounding too interested, or disinterested or - or whatever. He wanted to think before he leapt, or something, he just - . He wasn't good with these things.

"Uh," he said after a while. Credits were scrolling down the television. "Hey, are you..." he thought about ending the sentence with "hungry."

Sora shook his head, more as a way of getting Riku to stop talking than as an answer to his almost-question. "You ever feel like some part of you is just way more worn out than the rest? Like getting carpal tunnel in one hand or something? And you just wanna...replace it. You know, to give your hand a break."

He sighed. "Don't look at me like that." Riku was looking at him the way he might look at a kid sniffing sharpies, which was to say, confused and vaguely disturbed. "I mean, don't you just want to - never mind."

He fell into quiet for a few minutes, accompanied by the rapid and angry _pungpungpungpungpung_ outside. It sounded like the sky was dropping buckets full of black marbles on the ground (you had to say they were black marbles, or at least grey marbles, because it was a scared and furious rain, and it was the kind that wouldn't end in a rainbow; it would end with a grey sky that turned into night and didn't even give the sun a chance).

And then, after taking a breath, "I have to get my hand fixed. R- really soon. So..." He inhaled through his nose, deeply, flexing his fingers again. "I dunno," he said. "I probably won't be in school for, like, most of next week. I dunno."

He sneezed, and Riku discovered something interesting: Sora sneezed fairy sneezes. Four or five in a row, and all high pitched and in rapid succession. "Atsu! Atsu! Atsu! At-_choo_!" It was hilarious.

Riku giggled, just a little bit, but he stifled it. Because what he'd said just before that was real, even if it wasn't ten meters tall.

"Oh," he said, "You mean you have to be in the hospital?"

Sora nodded. "Uh-huh." He licked his lips, and turned to look at Riku. Riku had turned, resting his hand on his chin, which was resting on the couch's arm, and was staring out the window at bucketfuls of black marbles. He didn't have anything to say. He guessed that this was probably upsetting for Sora, but that didn't mean Riku could suddenly discover some empathetic, helpful part of himself buried deep in his soul, or some shit like that; he still had nothing to say and Sora had almost called him his almost-best-friend, and what was he supposed to do about that? He'd made it pretty clear he wasn't interested in making friends.

Riku was almost done closing the door on society, and Sora was one of those giant, annoying rubber doorstops. The kind that were actually _made_ to stop up doors, instead of those little triangular pieces of wood which worked just fine. Riku didn't like those; they were so _obnoxious_. He didn't - well, anyways.

The point was that Riku wasn't looking at Sora, who was glaring at him with red eyes and a shivery jaw. "Look - " he cut himself off, pursing his lips and pulling his knees up, hugging his ankles.

"I'm not asking you to marry me or anything, man," he said, and Riku turned to look at him a little. "I'm just saying that - " he sighed, and Riku looked at him fully. He didn't know it, because he couldn't see himself, but he'd completely turned off his glare. He looked calm. He didn't know that Sora took comfort in that, and he didn't know that Sora needed Riku, the ground, because real life wasn't a perfect tree. "I'm just saying that I'm gonna need a little _help_, okay? Quit acting like _you're_ the one who needs a whole new hand."

Riku froze, his mouth half open and his brain working furiously. And furiously was right, he was _angry_ about - _something_, at himself, or at Sora or the situation. Why was Sora, smiles-sunshine-choo-choo-train-best-friend _Sora_ accusing him of self-involvement?! None of this was his _fault_ -

And it wasn't Sora's fault, either. Sora had had his hand burned off in a fire that orphaned him, which was about as traumatic as it got. Sora had had his entire life displaced. Sora had been separated from the only other living member of his immediate family, and he kept going and looking for silver linings in clouds that were spitting lightning and trying to drown islands. And _Riku_ was complaining? God, he was such a _dick_, excuse his language.

What killed him was that even right after he'd realized it, he knew he didn't have any real inclination to fix it. He wasn't going to slide over the couch and hug the kid, and he wasn't even going to take his hand. A little part of him wanted to, but too many factors worked against the inclination. For one thing, he didn't even hug his family. So if he'd told himself to do it, it would have been like trying to get up before ten on a Sunday morning. _I'll get up in five seconds...four...three..two...one..._and then you didn't move, anyways. And for another thing, Sora had told him - not even six hours ago - that he might be gay.

And that was fine, really, of course it was, it was just...did he really want to hug a gay boy? _Really_? Wouldn't that be like hugging a girl, only more one-sided? Not that Riku hugged girls, either.

But Riku was looking at Sora's eyes, his stupid, _stupid _sky-colored eyes that were the only part of the dry half of the island that was sky-colored right now because the real sky was raining black marbles, but Sora's eyes were sky-colored even when they were wet and _fuck_, excuse is _fucking_ language, Riku didn't like meeting peoples' eyes. Because it meant they were looking back at you, and even though Riku knew eyes weren't the window to anyone's stupid soul, they still _felt_ so much more open than any other part of the body.

Sora choked a little, widening those eyes and tripping over his words. "I - I'm sorry, Riku, I didn't mean it, seriously - I would never say something like that - it's just that so much stuff happened today, and - " his voice cracked, and he coughed.

"No," Riku said, sort of smiling at him. "No, it's fine." He cursed himself. That was _not_ a perfect tree sentence. Saying something like "no, it's fine," made it seem like Riku was all in the right, and Sora was all in the wrong, and Riku was the bigger person for forgiving him, which wasn't right at _all_. Sora was right. Riku had screwed up, and he'd screwed up again, but he'd been silent for too long now and he couldn't correct himself. "I mean," he said, even though the conversation had died again, "I was way out of line. It's just...uh...my default, okay?" It wasn't perfect, but it worked. Sora was smiling.

"Haha," he grinned, sticking his tongue out. "Riku, the epic fail socialite."

"Psh," Riku snorted, throwing the remote at Sora's head and missing by half a meter. "Sora, the epic fail..." he paused. "Shit. The epic fail non-bedhead-haver." Oops.

Normalcy clicked back into place with a metaphysical _thunk_, like the over-sized gear of a clock tower, when Sora laughed a snorting, gross, teenage-boy laugh. "It's not bedhead, it's...Roxas-head!"

"Well, Sora, I hate to break it to you..." Riku almost-grinned, because he was a _teenager_ and pointless, stupid banter came _naturally_ to people his age.

"Yeah, says mister snowy angel white hair!" Sora cackled and tossed a pillow at Riku's head, aiming impressively badly.

And the world was a ten-meter-tall tree.

* * *

For some reason, all the public transport Riku ended up on smelled like musk. Not like nature-y, grassy forest musk, but the kind of musk that happened when you mixed old middle-class lady with testosterone-pumped city teenager and sweaty businessman. He didn't know if it was just some sort of conspiracy against him, or something, but _every_ bus he got on was like that.

Maybe all buses smelled that way, all the time. But he figured that maybe the guy that cleaned the buses, whoever he was, must have at least _one_ bus, every day - probably the last one - that he just didn't clean. He probably thought to himself, _Well, who'll even notice? It'll be dirty again this time tomorrow anyway,_ and so just went home ten minutes early. Riku wouldn't blame the guy, if it wasn't for the fact that he always ended up on those buses.

He _really_ hoped not all buses smelled the way this one smelled; it smelled like despair. _That's_ what it was. He was sitting in the very back, resting his head against the cold glass window, his backpack on the seat next to him. The only other people on the bus were a couple, sitting down the two or three stairs that led from the back of the bus to the rest of it, so Riku had a _perfect_ view of the backs of their heads as they kissed obnoxiously. Like they were trying to suck each other's faces out, or something.

He couldn't help but think that they must have known he was there, and were just showing off for some strange reason.

Riku just sneered, sticking his tongue out and making a face at the clueless couple before rolling his eyes and resting the back of his head on the back window again, tilting his head to the side. The window was gross and smeared with hand prints; the world outside wasn't much better. The sun was just about setting, though it was hard to tell. It had only stopped raining that morning. The bus rattled as it hauled itself to a pause at a stop sign, causing his head to bump against the stupid back window and the empty, now-useless handholds hanging from the ceiling to sway from side to side, squeaking.

The guy of the couple had had those stupid white earphones in his ears - the ones that came with the music player for free - but one of them fell out. He detached himself from his girlfriend, swearing and fumbling for the lost bud. She made a pouty face, rolled her eyes and adjusted herself on the seat.

He hoped they weren't going where he was going; it was hard enough for him to do what he was doing without the most shallow romance in the world being paraded in front of him.

He just sighed and rubbed at one of his eyes, pulling his backpack closer to himself and looking at his shoes on the grooved rubber floor for the next few minutes before, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the big white building.

He paused for a second, with his finger on the yellow stop button, before just sighing and pressing. There was a vague buzzing sound, and a few seconds later the bus rolled to a stop and Riku picked up his backpack, slinging it over one shoulder. All his binders were bottom-heavy, so it resulted in the top half of his bag being stretched out and the bottom having awkward lumps; he fished his mp3 out of one of the smaller pockets and walked right past the exhibitionist couple without looking at them.

He wasn't so comfortable with the non-residential part of Destiny Island. The downtown, only it wasn't. It was a nice place, it had an ice skating rink, and a few nice restaurants, and a hospital. Mostly a hospital.

The glass doors were the kind that needed one strong push before they went and opened themselves; it was disconcerting. And the hallway of the hospital, as well as the waiting room it led to, didn't smell how he expected a hospital to smell. He would have expected it to be all clean and white, and smell like disinfectant and blood or something; it didn't. It smelled like carpet, and something uniquely its own: sort of pungent, bitter and offensive, like a new car, only worse. He almost sneezed, but he felt like he shouldn't.

There were a good ten or fifteen people in the waiting room already; some of them reading the provided dog-eared magazines, some of them trying to keep their kids quiet. One or two - the scariest ones, to Riku - just gripped the armrests or the plastic and metal generic chairs, staring at the ground and not moving an awful lot.

A couple of people looked up when he walked in, an unchaperoned teenager being probably being at least vaguely unusual, but Belle was in the corner and she stood up right away.

Today she was in one of those pretty yellow sundresses, with her hair plaited back loosely and her big brown eyes rimmed with dark rings.

"Riku," she smiled, very human, wringing her hands together. "Hey, I didn't know if you'd show up today, I thought you might have a lot of homework, I know Sora complains about it all the time," she laughed.

Riku shook his head. "No," he said, "Today was a short day, so I finished most of my homework."

"Oh!" she said, looking surprised. "Well, that's good that it was a short day, maybe Sora didn't miss much if you only had half of your classes."

Riku paused and licked his lips. "Yeah," he said, even though she wasn't right. On half days you met with all of your teachers, just for half as long, so Sora had really just missed another whole day of school, not that it mattered. Besides, you didn't correct other peoples' parents about stuff like that. It was dumb. There was no point.

"Well, anyways - " her phone started to ring, and she blinked blankly for a moment before seeming to realize it. "Oh," she muttered, going back to her chair and picking up her purse, rifling through it with little clicking sounds of object on object. "Aw, _crap_," she grumbled, which was off-putting. You didn't expect a pretty woman in a yellow sundress to say things like "Aw, crap," but apparently some of them did.

She stared at her cell for a second, pursing her lips and looking unhappy. She sighed through her nose after a moment, looking at Riku. "I'm so sorry," she said sincerely, "I'll be right back, can you wait a minute?"

"Yeah, sure."

Belle went out to the hall, holding the phone up to her ear. Riku sat down in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs, dropping his backpack next to the chair. He wasn't sure, really, why he was there. Maybe because he hadn't _really_ had a choice, by normal social standards. Before he left Sora's house on Saturday Belle had given him the address of the hospital, and even told him about the easy bus route, and asked if he would be coming. What was he supposed to say, "No, I hate hospitals and I'm still kind of _eh_ about your foster son"? This was why Riku Tepes hated social obligations.

He grunted and perched his chin on his fist, looking at all the people in the hospital chairs.

Riku Tepes was a kind of unintentionally morbid person. Often, without meaning to, his mind would just _go_ places it wasn't normal to go. One time, for a project, he was cutting a bunch of paper shapes out of paper with an exacto knife and all he could think about was _what if he slipped, or dropped it, or forgot where it was - _and what would happen if it was sliding between his ribs. Not deadly, or anything. Just what would happen, if something drastic were to finally make itself reality. Who would call an ambulance for him, and how it actually _felt_, being stabbed. If metal could feel sharp when it was inside you, or something. It wasn't a morbid thing, though, was the funny thing. It was just...curiosity. He knew what it felt like to bleed, and he didn't have a death wish.

He leaned back in the chair, staring up at the harsh ceiling-tile fluorescent lights, wondering what would happen if he went blind. Sometimes he spent whole days not looking at the sun; you learned to, living on the dry side of the island. The sun happened an awful lot, and too many things were reflective. But now he was staring right up at the lights, even though it hurt his eyes and he could feel those little purple-black-green sun spots forming on his eyes.

He looked down again, digging the corners of his palms in his eyes.

_"Y'know how when you're still tired, your eyes kind of sting, even when you close them?"_

He sighed.

_Yeah._

Belle came back in a few minutes, looking upset and pacing while still walking forward, if that even made any sense, which it didn't to Riku. Worrying her lower lip with her teeth, she sat down in the chair next to him, still staring at her phone. Glaring at it, more like.

"Ugh," she said, which was another funny sound to hear from that voice. "I can't believe this, of all the times - !" She turned to Riku, frowning and fisting, then unfisting her hands. "I have to go in to work. _Right_ now, apparently; they made that much clear."

She turned her head to the side, making a little distressed noise. "I can't _believe_ this," she said again. "Riku - " she looked at him full on. "I know this is a lot to ask, but I just don't think I can stay until he wakes up, and..." she sighed, again. "I wouldn't feel comfortable if he had to wake up all alone - "

What _was_ it with this _stupid _family and guilting him into shit?

* * *

Riku clipped the visitor "badge" to the flap of his backpack. It wasn't a badge at all, and he didn't know why the nurse manning the front desk had insisted on calling it that. It was a badly laminated ID tag, but it just said VISITOR in all capital letters in a faded red color, and in a font Riku was pretty sure he recognized.

Sora was still asleep, when he got to the kid's room. Riku stood in the doorway for a minute or two, awkwardly, wondering if it was okay for him to go all the way inside and sit down when Sora might not even be expecting him.

But what the hell, he'd gone to all the fucking trouble of filling out a visitor log and having Belle explain why he was allowed inside (Sora, apparently, had "special circumstances," not having a real family and all), and he _did_ have a badly laminated badge.

The room was pretty expected, for a hospital room. The walls were white-painted concrete, and the tiles were speckled grey. The chairs were a little better than the ones in the waiting room, which were almost the same kind as in Riku's school. There were two of them, on the opposite side of the bed from a big tan beeping machine, and they were padded. A little. He sat down in one of them, and put his backpack down in the other one.

Sora looked creepy. Not that _he_ was creepy, like Riku would have thought he was a shady person in alley way, or something. But like something creepy had tried to eat him from the inside out. He was pale, jaundiced, and his hair was a little limper than usual and he wasn't sleeping like he had a few days ago, on Riku's lap (which Riku still maintained was one of the most painfully awkward moments of his short life). He was totally still, and straight as a board, with his right hand heavily bandaged and flung out as far as it could go away from his body.

He was still making little "Mnam, mnam," smacking noises, but they were meek and uncomfortable.

Boy, hospitals sure were depressing.

He prepared himself for a good, long wait. Sora looked like Riku imagined Sleeping Beauty looked most of the time: perpetually tired, even after being asleep for a hundred years, and having a nightmare where he was strapped down.

His little boy chest was covered halfway with generic hospital blanket, but Riku could see it push up-down, up-...-down, slowly, wondering at how solid he looked.

A tiny shadow caught his eye, and he looked up at another one of those ceiling-tile fluorescent lights.

There was a little brown moth, flickering around it frantically like it was lost. It was just a funny dun blur, darting from point to point in the empty space in the room. Riku was surprised to see something like a moth in a hospital; he'd thought they were immaculately clean and sterile places. But, he supposed, even hospitals had to have windows, and windows always got left open by some moron. That was another one of those stupid things that happened; people opening up windows for no reason and then not even closing them.

There was a window in this room, but it was closed. Riku saw, though, that is was almost completely dark out; he'd already called and told his mom that he'd be home late. He'd spat some crap about going to a friend's house, and she'd been so glad he was getting social interaction she hadn't questioned it.

The moth was trying to land somewhere, but it kept changing its mind. He wondered how something as small as a moth even chose where and where wasn't a good place to land; it was touching down on the wall or the floor or the bed and then taking off not a second later. The word flighty didn't so much come to mind, mostly because the word twitchy was already flitting in front of your eyes no matter where you looked.

On some silly impulse, Riku stood up to follow it, casually, around the room. It went to one side of the bed, so did he. He followed it with his eyes, curious and confused, because he knew moths couldn't think, but he still thought it was kind of endearing.

At one point, it brushed over first the back of his hand, then seemed to contemplate landing on the bridge of his nose. It was scared off, though, when Riku laughed and the sensation; people weren't exaggerating, for once, when they talked about the softness of butterfly wings. He'd always liked moths better, anyways, even if they were just little and brown in a hospital room.

It felt like _nothing_, like somebody had taken all the nothing in the world and condensed it into a little bug-shaped thing and tickled his nose with it.

Eventually, it landed right next to the leg of Riku's chair, so he just sat back down and sighed.

He kept on avoiding stepping on it, really consciously; every time he turned to get a book from his backpack he carefully moved his foot around it. It was completely still, now, with only the occasional little flutter of wings to prove it was still alive. He didn't know why he was doing it. But some part of him really didn't want the little thing to get crushed by his foot.

He read ahead a bit on the book they were reading for English, got bored, got hungry. Not half an hour into waiting for Sora to wake up, and he wanted to leave to get something from the vending machine he'd seen on this floor. He debated it for a few minutes, looking at Sora in the bed - who didn't look likely to wake up any time soon, anyways - and estimating how long it would take for him to go there and back.

And eventually, of course, he drew out a crumpled dollar bill from his pocket and stood up, gripping the arms of his seat.

When he left the room, though, he was very careful to avoid stepping on the moth, which was still resting next to the metal leg of the plastic chair. He returned in a few minutes.

* * *

"There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed."**  
**

**- W. Somerset Maugham**, _'Of Human Bondage', 1915_  
_English dramatist & novelist (1874 - 1965)_

_

* * *

_

When Sora started to feel conscious again, when the world started to settle itself around him like a concrete blanket, he kept his eyes closed. This hospital smelled different, more like bitter old paper or something. The other one had smelled like...well, he didn't remember, but sometimes he went places that smelled like it and it made him feel sticky inside. He didn't like smell memory all that much.

But the point was, he didn't open his eyes. Because once he opened his eyes, he was awake, _boom_, awake-awake-awake, and if he was alone when he woke up he didn't know if he could handle it. He couldn't handle being alone again, in a hospital that smelled funny at night, not knowing if anybody was going to come. He didn't want the first person he saw when he woke up to be a nurse, he just couldn't - he just can't - .

But he remembered that, this time, there was somebody - maybe two people, even - who knew he was there, who weren't dead and weren't going to be taken away, that he wasn't alone, that Belle had promised to be there...so it was okay. It was okay, because he hadn't opened his eyes yet, and he could almost hear somebody else in the room, breathing, waiting for him. He could open his eyes.

He did, sitting up a little and yawning and smiling.

He was alone in the room. There was nobody in the plastic chairs against the wall, no nurse checking his stats, no stern police officers waiting in the corner to question him. Only Sora.

He scooted back to lean all the way up against the wall his bed was touching and staring at the door.

He paused. He felt like something had just happened. Like maybe he'd made a realization. Or maybe somebody had reached inside his chest, just reached right in there and took out his heart, and maybe his stomach and his throat too, and that someone had lit fires behind his eyes. And that the fires were chasing the water out the front.

He started to cry, very quietly, pulling his legs up to his chest and burying his face between his knees. And _oh_, he was such a sad little boy, in a dark room on a Tuesday night trying to hold himself together when he knew that what held people together was sticky stuff, like kisses and hugs and being there when you woke up. His poor body in nothing but a hospital gown, which shook.

He was almost asleep a few minutes later, though. Crying was one of the most exhausting things a person could do.

And just a minute after that, Riku came back with a bag of cheese crackers, which were the only non-chip-or-candy-bar option. It was almost dinner time, and even if he'd had a late lunch, he was still a teenager. He liked food.

To him, Sora had only rolled over a little in his sleep. He didn't know about his impressively awful timing, he didn't hear Sora crack.

But when he went to go sit back down in the chair again, he impulsively looked for the moth, just to see - out of curiosity - if if was still there, settling and twitching and settling again, next to the leg of the chair. He almost smiled when he saw the little brown blur on the floor.

The moth was dead. It was lying on its back, the lower half of its body horribly mangled and part of one of its wings crushed. He must have smushed it when he stood up before, with the chair leg, when he so carefully stood up to walk around it.

Sitting on the chair now, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, he just kept staring at its tiny dead body. How strange. It had been alive until just a second ago, did things really die that quietly? It was strange, that not five minutes ago it had been flying around the room, livelier than any stupid butterfly, and now it was dead. Dead dead dead.

Riku just kept staring at the dead moth, next to his shoe, taking a deep shaky breath. He blinked repeatedly, trying to get rid of the telltale sting in his eyes, because it didn't make any sense to cry over that. So he stood up, scooped the tiny corpse into his hand, and brushed it into the nearby trashcan.

He came and sat back down in the chair, looking at Sora. He looked at the trashcan again, and he knew his eyes were red.

"Shit," he whispered, toeing off his shoes. He dug the corners of his palms into his eyes. It wasn't right. Stupid moth shouldn't be dead. He could have avoided it so easily, if he hadn't pushed the chair forward that one centimeter when he stood up. He shouldn't want to cry over a stupid moth, he thought to himself.

He came over and sat on the edge of the bed, looking at Sora, who was now sort of curled up, facing Riku, with his bandaged hand still flung out to one side.

_"I - I think I might be gay!"_

What a brave thing to say to a mostly-stranger. Weight of the world on his shoulders and he had to do that, too.

In the same vein of thought that made him wonder what it was like to be stabbed, he wondered what would happen if he kissed Sora. He wasn't about to go actually kissing another boy any more than he planned on shoving a knife through his ribs, but it couldn't hurt to wonder, like if it would be any different kissing a boy than kissing a girl. He wondered if it mattered, when you were actually kissing the person; if when you were kissing you actively thought "I am kissing a boy" versus "I am kissing a girl" or if it was just "I am kissing Sora," or if it was anything. He supposed it was kind of insulting to assume Sora would want to kiss him back, since gay people weren't attracted to _every_ person of their gender, right? They taught that in sex ed class.

But that proved a fruitless and, ultimately, boring train of thought. It wasn't very interesting, since it wasn't going to happen, since Riku didn't give much of a shit either way about relationships, gay or otherwise.

He just kept thinking about that moth, alive ten minutes ago, now dead in a trash bin. And in two days the trash guy would come pick it up, along with all the other garbage a hospital produces, and it would be dumped in a land fill and eaten by other, smaller bugs. But if it wasn't for him, it would have gone on to - he didn't know. Mate with another moth and lots of happy little moth babies and eaten wool, or something. Didn't moths eat wool? Or was that cotton?

Didn't matter.

He just kept _thinking _about it, and then looking back at Sora, until he finally shook his head and sighed.

He reached out, wrapping an arm around Sora's shoulders as well as he could and sliding down on the bed so that he was practically lying down on it, pulling the kid to his side. Sora was warm and solid.

To Riku's surprise, though, Sora took a big, heaving gasp, wincing and burying his face in Riku's side.

"Hey," Riku said, since he was evidently awake.

Sora nodded, squeezing his eyes shut and taking a shuddering breath. There was a little bit of color coming back to his cheeks, blotchy and uneven from tears. He sniffed loudly.

"...so, the snack food in this hospital sucks," Riku said, opening the bag of cheese crackers.

Sora just smiled, with his eyes still shut tight and his face against Riku's ribs. He was still crying. Because people couldn't always make things better. He was crying, and Riku felt like _he _wanted to cry, and somewhere far away another moth was being crushed by a chair.

The thing about real life is that it doesn't go away just because you've stopped believing in it.

* * *

The sun was basically gone in Liverpool, England. It was just that hazy sort of dusk where the sky was a pale grey, fading to dark blue, and everybody was starting to feel sleepy.

Except Roxas. Always Roxas. He was walking around, like he'd been doing for the last half an hour. Anything to get out of that house. They always acted like he was some stupid _charity_, not a person. After dinner, every night, they'd come up and talk to him in little shifts of time, "How was your _day_?" and "So, Roxas, what sorts of _mo_vies do you like?" and "How are you _lik_ing England, huh? It's so _funny_ that we had to move away from America so fast." They weren't a family. They were zookeepers, and he had to get out of that house, because he was sleeping in a guest room, and it felt every bit a guest room even after four months.

It wasn't that he didn't have friends. He had Hayner, and Pence, and Olette. But sometimes it was hard to break through the bond they had with each other. They'd been friends since kindergarten. He'd been their friend since ninth grade. It wasn't the same thing, at all, and even though they didn't show it he suspected he was always going to be the odd one out.

A tiny woman with an impressively black Labrador was across the street from him, pulling her trenchcoat tighter around her waist as wind blew harder. Roxas felt his cheek slapped by part of his hair, and ignored it, sticking his hands in his sweatshirt pockets. He headed where he always headed.

It was funny, that Roxas liked the church so much. He was a definite atheist. It was _Sora_ who wanted to believe in God so badly.

Which was another funny thing, now that he thought about it. The same event, the same repercussions for the both of them, and it sent them in opposite directions. But _Sora_ never talked about going to any churches on Destiny Island. And here Roxas was, a week away from fifteen and headed for a place that worshipped a God he refused to acknowledge.

It was a nice church, even if it was always a little empty. When Roxas stepped inside, he felt his innards jiggle a little, like the stained glass windows were hissing at him to get out, get out, get _out_, non-believer. But the priest - when he was there, anyway - always smiled at him.

But it wasn't the building he liked, anyways. The building was dank, and a little depressing, the wooden benches sagging tiredly in their middles with the varnish almost completely chipped off. There was never enough light, even though they had electric lamps, and there were little New Testament quotes on pieces of construction paper taped to the walls.

Roxas shook his head and sneezed; the lights were off and what little amount of street light coming in through the windows was pale and thin _like that man_ no.

He shivered, heading for the stone staircase, which he suspected was older than this part of the building. It was practically medieval. Heck, it could have been. It was England. People only ever made a big deal about the old things in England.

The stairs were wrapped in a vicious and tightly wound spiral that would have made anybody sick with dizziness, but he was used to it. The smell of wet rock and the black hood of his sweatshirt, pulled up around his head, pervaded the air. He could hear his blood pump-pump-pumping in his ears, louder and louder in a familiar pattern the more tired he got and the closer he got to the -

Belfry.

It wasn't big, or impressive, or high. It was damp concrete, and it was just a small square of it. It was always windy and depressing, and it wasn't very high up for a bell tower. He could probably jump with only a broken limb to show for it.

The bell itself was old and decrepit, held up by one long thick rope. Roxas guessed that it used to be bronze; now it was just rusted over brown and green and covered in a crumbly and uneven layer of bird poop. It smelled disgusting, but he didn't care, because it was too windy to smell anything.

He sat down on its edge, dangling his feet down and kicking his legs against the wall. He didn't care that his butt was getting cold and wet. He liked heights. That and ice cream, he liked.

Sitting on the edge of the belfry always felt familiar to him. Sitting high up and looking down at a sad little city filled with tar-covered roofs and chimneys that didn't work. He always felt a bit lonely, though, up there by himself. But it was good for thinking.

He didn't care that his foster family treated him like a pet.

He didn't care that Hayner and Pence and Olette went places without him but not without each other.

He just had to wait until he was eighteen.

_"What, you're just gonna abandon your family and like, your life and shit to join the fucking **circus** as soon as you can? What are you, retarded?"_

_"You did it."_

_"That - aw," he grinned. "That's different, you retard! It was an - um - a delicate domestic...situation. You, you'll start crying like a pansy for your mom three weeks in."_

_"I was orphaned and I hate my foster family."_

_Axel paused, snorted and grinned. "...well then let me give you a welcome-the-fuck-aboard handshake three years early, kiddo."_

If you ran away when you were eighteen, they weren't allowed to come and get you.

Inside the bell, a tiny moth flapped its silky brown wings.

* * *

A/N: So...uh, yeah, I didn't get to everything I said I would. I have causes:

1) The chapter would have been twice as long. It's already freaking long.

2) Artistic...difficulties?

3) LOOK LOOK ROXAS GO GET ROXAS AND LEAMME ALONE

* * *


	7. Unrelated

* * *

A/N: This is not part of the story. It's taking place in, what, July? But two days ago I realized "Aw..._shucks_, it's my birthday on Saturday, I should do something to celebrate my impending death." I'm not such a big fan of getting presents because I was born (anyone can be born, it isn't difficult for the child involved), but I figure people should give back to the world that let them in in the first place, huh? Then I gave up on that because it's hard and wrote a semi-related one-shot for this story.

Just keep in mind that it's a good four months later, so if their behavior or interactions seem different or not what you'd expect, that might be why. Or maybe I just screwed up. Tell me. (And yes, I wrote this on a word processor, so it does look a little different.)

* * *

Riku Tepes had been thinking about it, and had decided that he wasn't gay. At least, not traditionally. He had never in his few but hormonal teenage years found himself attracted to a man. He had never seen a male model in a magazine and thought to himself, _"That is hot shit."_

…he'd never thought that about any girls, either, but he had definitely felt himself leaning towards those of the female persuasion when it came to how severely he was apathetic towards them, versus active dislike. Maybe it was that girls matured faster and comparatively rarely made penis jokes.

School was out for the summer, and had been for three weeks. Sora and Riku had fallen into the sort of boring, predictable and repetitive pattern that often characterizes lazy summers. Part-time work in the morning at a coffee shop or a bookstore or a tacky seaside restaurant, and the rest of the day and most of the night was spent at the beach or at someone's house, or even at the coffee shop or bookstore or tacky seaside restaurant they'd come from, now as customers. Riku didn't see anything wrong with it; he liked repetition. It was reliable.

Of course, it was Sora. Reliable usually just meant he was going to show up. It didn't mean he wasn't going to say something stupid, or fantastic, or try to climb a tree to see how far up it he could get just because.

Riku was taking some joy in the fact that Sora absolutely did not know how to deal with tropical summers. He wore _pants _on the first day of June. _Pants_.

Riku wasn't the most compassionate person in the world, but even _he_ wouldn't let Sora leave the house in long baggy pants on the first day of June.

He almost missed that week in March when it had rained for five days straight. It was also the week Sora had had surgery, but it didn't mean Riku couldn't wish the ground was wet, or that there were at least clouds in the fucking sky, the one he was staring at now which was so fucking _blue_ it hurt his eyes.

They were on Sora's roof, sometime in the late afternoon, wearing nothing but swim suits and sweat and the sour smell of sun lotion. Sora's roof was small, and flat, and made of white stucco like the rest of his house. Belle claimed she liked it because the color kept the heat out, which Riku supposed was reasonable. But really, he couldn't imagine either of them living in a black house, so.

Spread out like sea stars, both of them, not even touching. Each man trying to find a better way to cool down. Riku could still smell the sun tan lotion; pungent and oily and yet somehow comforting, like every summer comforting, because it smelled like swimming and hiking and summer camp and going outside even though it was over a hundred degrees because it was _summer_ and yesterday could be today could be tomorrow comforting.

Sora was, naturally, the first one to speak. Tigers could shed, but they stayed stripy. "Dude," he groaned. "It's seriously like this _every_ summer?"

Riku rolled his eyes. "No, the weather's just picking on you," he grumbled, throwing an arm over his eyes and quickly removing it before the skin was glued together with sweat.

Sora laughed, wiggled his toes and moved a little closer. "It's okay, Riku," he smiled. "I know you only lash out because you're un_comfortable_ with how _close_ we've become as friends. That's what my _therapist _says." He snorted.

"Aw, Jesus," Riku moaned and hit the back of his head on the roof. "How many more of those stupid sessions do you even _have_?" He didn't care, but it was getting annoying how much Sora made fun of it.

"Just two," Sora sighed. "I only have to have three months' worth, then I get 'evaluated' to see if I've got to keep going, but I don't think I will. 'S not like I'm depressed about anything. Things have been going my way, you know?" He laughed. "I mean…lately, anyways."

Riku rolled his head to the side to meet Sora's eyes. He didn't like it, but at least he knew what to expect in Sora's. They were nicer than the sky, even (especially) when they weren't cloudy. "Yeah?" he asked quietly.

Sora smiled a little and made a small sort of "mmf" noise, wiping one eye with the back of his wrist. He'd learned not to use the hands he'd used to apply sunscreen for touching his eyes. After a couple of trial-and-errors which Riku could have technically helped him avoid. "Yeah," he said and laughed. "School's out, and the beaches here don't suck, and…" he saw Riku start to get that distant, "this is the part of Sora that is stupid and boring" look, "And I bagged myself a _hawt_ piece o' man meat!" he cawed, jabbing Riku in the stomach. Riku cringed in on himself, punching Sora in the gut without much conviction, baring his teeth.

"…fucktard." It was Riku's affectionate nickname for Sora. It had arisen after a few days of summer, in which Sora had been determined to establish a pattern of hanging out almost constantly. Any nickname Riku gave someone was affectionate, since he'd never bothered nicknaming anyone before (unless you counted "mom" or "dad," which Riku didn't).

"Yeah, but now you're paying attention." Sora just laughed, a very boyish and careless summer laugh, rolling onto his back and staring at the sky again. Riku followed his example after a few seconds.

They lapsed into a thoughtful sort of silence, spread out like almost-naked, sweaty sea stars trying to cool down again, barely touching. Riku started to blink when his eyes almost closed, stinging from perspiration and sunscreen. Any words he wanted to say hung on his tongue and stayed there only briefly, like moths, taking off before he could even sneeze from the tickling sensation.

Yes, he thought, he was probably not gay. Calling yourself gay meant that you appreciated everything about the male body (or female, if you were a girl, which Riku wasn't), got sexual gratification from it, the whole nine yards, right? It didn't mean you only got along with guys, but it meant you only wanted to date them, right? And Riku definitely didn't like Sora because he was a guy. The words _Sora_ and _penis_ didn't really feel right in the same sentence. He wasn't in like with Sora's _body_. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but it wasn't exactly fascinating. It was just a bunch of sticks, tied together with string, or it was when he was asleep.

Riku was a little worried that he'd fooled himself into liking Sora because his mind had finally found someone it couldn't scare off, someone interesting. That this was actually how friendship felt, when you were a teenager, but people probably minded when their friends kissed them. People probably didn't kiss their friends.

(Not they did that often, but more than once couldn't be blamed on spontaneity, right?)

But when Riku turned his head to the side to look at Sora, who was still staring up so determinedly it was like he expected to start floating, pulled up there, Riku wondered if that really mattered. He rolled his head back to stare at the sky.

After a few more minutes, Sora's hand appeared in the blue, sticking straight up with his fingers all spread out like he was trying to block the sunlight from his eyes, or at least touch it.

"You know," he said quietly, "I think I only ever have nightmares when my life is going, like, really well."

That wasn't true. Riku knew that wasn't true. Even the first time he'd slept over at Sora's house, the kid had woken him up in the middle of night because he was whimpering and kicking the foot of the bed and muttering in French and _screaming _in English and then curling up in a ball. But he always looked fine when he woke up, so maybe he forgot about them. Maybe you only remembered your nightmares when they were worse than your real life.

When Riku didn't respond, Sora continued, "I had a nightmare last night. I think." He coughed a little.

"Nn," Riku said, and winced inwardly. He was supposed to at least ask _what_, right? What Sora's nightmare was. He wasn't supposed to say _"Nn,"_ he was supposed to care because that's what friends did. But the world was not a fucking tree right now, it was not a tree and it was not a perfect circle it was dead fucking _moth_ that Riku had killed with his stupid chair –

"What about?" he muttered.

Sora blinked lazily, taking a deep breath and not-looking at the sun. An airplane hummed somewhere high up. "I don't really remember," he said, unperturbed by Riku's anger with himself, "I don't think anything happened, specifically. I just remember, like...I think there was a barking dog…" he trailed off and then on again, "And fire, but," he made a "tch" noise and rolled his eyes. "That's always there anyways. I just…" he sighed. "Woke up feeling scared, you know?"

Riku watched the plane live a thin smoky trail behind it as it crossed the blue blue sky. "Nn," he said again. He felt a small trickle of sweat run down the middle of his stomach. He started to think about swimming. Swimming was such a _pain_ when it was this hot out; there were way too many people at all the good beaches and Sora didn't like the rocky ones.

The silhouette of Sora's stretched out hand wiggled its fingers. "Yeah," he laughed, but stopped quickly. There was a thoughtful, teenage sort of pause. "It's like there's a…" he sighed again. "I don't know. Somewhere at the entrance to real life, there's a cardboard cutout of a cartoon alligator in a tailcoat and a topcoat with his hand out," Sora stretched his arm out to the side, hand flat and palm down, "With a little sign, like 'you must be at least this sad to enter.'"

Riku breathed in and out, very consciously. He ran a sticky hand through his hair. "Really?" he sighed. "You think so?"

Sora shook his head, and his spikes flopped from side to side. "I don't know what I think, man. It's just a theory." He laughed again, though. "I'd rather have nightmares at night than be living through one, though!" he grinned and looked at Riku, but Riku was frowning and running his sticky hand through his hair once again.

One effect of hanging around Sora so much was that Riku sometimes found himself just saying things before thinking them out first entirely, and what ended up coming out was so convoluted and prolix that it didn't even make sense to _him_.

"You really think so?" he frowned. "You think a person can't be happy, ever really, _actually_ happy no matter what? We'll always find some reason to complain?" He didn't like that thought.

"…well, I never said that," Sora shoved Riku's leg with his foot jokingly. "I bet there are happy people, I bet there are plenty of them." He didn't sound like he believed what he was saying, though. "Jeez, man, you make it sound like I'm trying to describe the human condition or something." He rolled over onto one side, propping his head on his fist and looming over Riku, grinning. "I'm just some idiot kid getting heatstroke on a rooftop in summer!"

There was another one of those horrible silences, when one of them said something just a little too serious and tried to cover it up with a joke, one of those quiet moments when neither of them wanted to plow the conversation forward, because anything they said would sound fake. They were what Riku dreaded.

Not that he minded the silence, but silence with Sora never seemed pensive or careful, not when he was looking down at you. Riku blinked and inhaled, then laughed, hard.

"Yeah," he said, "Why the hell did we decide it was a good idea to come up here to cool down?"

Sora stared at him for a second, then snorted and grinned and started laughing with him. "Wait, doesn't hot air _rise_?"

_Thunk_. Teenage idiocy was comfortably replaced. Riku smacked his head with his palm. "This was a really stupid idea. I mean this was a really fucking stupid idea."

Sora just cracked with laughter, cackling and rolling over again onto his stomach, resting his head on Riku's shoulder and just grinning and giggling to himself. Riku laughed with him a little, shaking his head, and they stayed like that, spread out like a couple of kids on a rooftop, touching. After a little while Sora stood, helping Riku up with his hand and then letting it go, putting his fists on his hips and looking at the houses all around. He reminded Riku of Peter Pan, a little.

Sora blinked and shook his head like a wet dog, then looked at Riku with his head tilted to the side. "Hey," he said. "Wanna go swimming at the beach?"

Riku almost sighed. Yes, yes, the _beach_, the densely-populated, disgustingly-scented, filled-with-kids-from-their-grade-who-always-stared-at-him-funny-when-he-smiled _beach_. Sora liked it. But he really was kind of clueless sometimes.

He supposed it was hypocritical of him to expect Sora to pick up on these things when he didn't even have a basic understanding of the workings of society, but that was _different_. He wasn't trying.

He wondered vaguely if Sora would pick up on it if he just kept quiet and let him come to his own conclusions, but didn't want to take the chance. "No," he said clearly, "Not really."

"Oh, 'kay," Sora smiled at him, unfazed. He made a show of thinking what else they could do, tapping his fingers on his chin, furrowing his eyebrows, making obnoxious "Hmm, _hmm_" sounds. Riku rolled his eyes.

"Why don't we go watch a movie on your laptop?" he said after a while, and Sora looked delighted at the prospect, if a bit sarcastically. He perked up, clapped his hands and jumped into the air a little.

"My room is air-conditioned!" he cried, heading for the window they'd crawled out of to get onto the roof.

In his room (which was, of course, pleasantly air conditioned) Riku sat on Sora's bed, watching him go over the little stack of DVDs on his dresser. There was nothing they hadn't watched before, but they'd amassed a pretty good collection of movies they both liked after a couple of days in the television room (chief among them, oddly enough, _Finding Nemo_).

And then when they were watching a movie they must have watched together at least three times that summer, Riku kept thinking about being gay. He was definitely not gay, and that wasn't one of those I'm-vehemently-denying-it-because-I-know-it's-true facts, which was what it sounded like, but it was just a stupid _fact_ that Riku Tepes didn't fit the requirements for being gay. Of course that made it sound even more like denial. It was a vicious cycle.

It was nice and cool in Sora's room, and Riku sighed happily, spreading out. Even the blankets felt good against his skin as a layer of sweat evaporated. Next to him, Sora was sitting down and putting the laptop on a book to keep it a little higher than they were, drawing all the shades.

"Oh, hey," he said casually, laying on his stomach next to Riku, "Before I forget, Kairi says there's a party or something at her house tomorrow." He let out a big breath through puffed cheeks, twisting a finger around a piece of Riku's hair, which was spread out on a pillow.

"So?" Riku asked, just as lazy, staring up at his friend. He'd gotten used to Sora's touchy-feely-contact when they were alone. He didn't like it, but.

Sora shrugged. "I don't know," he said, leaning over Riku's face and grinning. "Maybe I'll drag you if I feel like it. I mean, I _like_ Kairi." Riku stuck his tongue and tried to smack Sora, who just crinkled his nose and laughed, rolling out of the way and then back again, sticking his head under Riku's outstretched arm.

"Hey," he said, laughing again.

Then there was quiet. A very awkward, close, sweaty-but-cooling down heart-beating quiet accompanied by car chase noises from the laptop. Sora stared at Riku stared at sky stared at land stared at Sora stared at Riku. It was one of those moments when both of them were waiting for the other the move first, forwards or backwards, it didn't matter. Riku could just feel the skin of Sora's hip against his ribs, _no layers_, and his neck against the inside of his arm, hair tickling his wrist. It wasn't like the first time, at all, but there was that same horrible trepidation because they both knew what was coming Sora kissed Riku kissed Sora.

It started out like it had both times before, awkward and stiff-lipped because neither one really knew what he was doing, and Riku just kept thinking _that's a boy that's a boy you're kissing a boy **boys are not supposed to kiss other boys** Sora is a __BOY__ stop kissing a __BOY_

Followed by a moment of mental silence when all the tiny little gears in his head were turn-turn-turning, and the image of a dead moth flashed through his mind, and of how the words _Sora_ and _penis_ didn't really belong in the same sentence.

And then there was a _ping_. A moment of wonderful clarity.

_It doesn't matter._

And that was what made the kisses worth it. Getting past that horrible front moment of _what the fuck are we doing_ to what most people must feel immediately when they kiss. They fell into a tentative little rhythm for a minute, sometimes two, and Riku rested his knuckles against Sora's cheek and stopped thinking about gender or the car crash sounds from the laptop. Sora was Sora. That was all.

Sora was a person, and Riku was a person, and they were separate entities, touching.

Riku Tepes probably wasn't gay.

But he didn't really seem to care.

* * *

A/N: You know what? I haven't ever written a sincere kiss before, 'kay! Deal with it! It's my birthday! I have a cold!

BE NICE

* * *


	8. Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe?

* * *

**But There's No Climax.**

**

* * *

**"A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way."  
- **John Tudor**

**

* * *

**

A/N: 1) I do not hate Kairi. I am not a Kairi-basher. I'm quite fond of her. I think her skirts could be a little longer, and she might consider pants in the long-term future, but overall she's a perfectly nice character. Even in this story. She gets better.

2) …just, if it seems worse than usual, this was hard to write.

3) Ignore the AN at the end of the chapter.

* * *

Sora tapped his foot against the inside of the car door, worrying his lower lip with his teeth. The car smelled stale and warm; the radio was on very quietly and Belle was humming to the tune. The school seemed to be the one that pulled up to the car and stopped moving, big and looming and scary and big.

He coughed. "I," he began, "I really don't feel so great, still, and I mean, it's a Friday anyways so if I just miss one more day of school – "

"Sora," Belle said quietly. She had that condescending Mom sound in her voice. "You have to go to school today. You've missed four days this week."

He took a second to evaluate what the best approach was here to convince her. A sort of scared, weak "trying to be brave" tone, or an "I'm very sure of how much I can handle" voice? He could get all his important assignments from Riku, anyways, and there was no point in getting him to go to school if he wasn't going to be able to pay attention. Right? He pulled the dark sleeve of his sweater over his bandage. Cast. It was a cast now, that's why it was so big and he couldn't take it off, and why his fingerless gloves couldn't fit over it. It was a cast now and he had to wear a big black sweater to cover it up, even though it was almost April. Even though people would see it.

The doctor hadn't cared.

_"Sora, I know the big cast seems like a hassle, but you just have to bear with it for a few weeks!"_

The _doctor_ didn't have to go to high school any more. He didn't have to go see a bunch of teenagers and come up with some explanation for being out since last Friday.

But he'd only been in the hospital less than a _week_, weren't they supposed to keep you in for longer if it was big surgery? Wasn't a skin graft big?

"Just bear with it today, sweetie," Belle said, reaching over to put a hand on his knee. "If it's really _so_ bad you can call me from the nurse's office, okay?"

Sora sighed. Belle was probably the only parent, foster-or-otherwise, who said things like that and meant them. Most people said things like that and implied that only a big old crybaby would actually do it. But now he felt bad.

"Yeah," he sighed. Maybe nobody would notice. Teenagers were pretty self-involved. But either way he wasn't going to have a fun day.

It really hit him when he got out of the car, backpack slung over just one shoulder, and saw it drive away. _Goodbye, my one last chance at happiness._

But he just blinked real hard, shook his head and thought of all the good things today. Science was first, and he didn't have any tests today, and of the five blocks today one was sex ed and another was math with Mr. Leonhart, who never made people learn things on Fridays anyways. He grinned. And he could probably rope Riku into some sort of social activity. And Riku didn't give a flying duck how he was feeling and wouldn't ask stupid questions!

The day was looking up.

* * *

Riku Tepes hated Fridays. People seemed to talk more than usual. And they usually talked a lot.

His fingernails were getting too long, too, and now he was going to spend seven hours feeling like he had claws or something before he could go home. He hated that feeling, too, plus by some horribly cruel cosmic twist of fate his locker was right next to Kairi's, who apparently had more friends than brain cells. And she always brought one of them with her to her locker. And her friends always leaned against _Riku's_ locker while they were talking to her.

So while he was dragging his overly-large biology textbook out from the menacing pile of crap in his locker, he was grinding his teeth trying not to listen to the fast-paced conversation going on over his head.

"But I mean oh my _God_, she totally hates me! I'm telling you, like _every_one got an A on that essay except for me. I was doing really well in her class, and then I guess she overheard me talking or something outside of school, I don't know _what_ about, and now she hates me!" she was saying. Her friend was nodding empathetically.

"I know what you mean! My bio teacher is like mean to _every_body in the class except for like two people, because they always do the extra credit. It's totally unfair how they play favorites! It's screwing my grades up so much!" her friend said, huffing. "I have some teachers who just don't play favorites, and I know that I totally try harder in those classes because I can, like, do good!"

_Superheroes "do good"_, Riku thought sarcastically. _And I can only hope that someday you realize what an idiot you are and find a cure._

He did his best to tune out for the next few seconds until the emphatic cries of "Sora!" registered. Oh. Sora. Um, wasn't he in the hospital on Tuesday?

"Oh my gosh, Sora! I totally thought you were gonna be out all week!" Kairi said, running up to talk to him in the middle of the hallway. Of course, this prevented Sora from moving forward and created a roadblock, which Kairi didn't notice. Riku called people like that hallway snot.

Still fiddling with his lock, he stood up, catching a glance of them out of the corner of his eye.

Kairi was full-on Japanese, but you wouldn't know it if you looked at her from behind. She dyed her hair red, and she wore blue contact lenses and lots of soft pink and flip-flops. She wasn't a person's traditional image of the perfect Japanese high-school-age daughter.

She laughed. For such an annoying person, Riku thought, she had a nice laugh. "Are you alright, though? Really. You left so fast last week! I was like, actually worried!" She laughed again, and Sora kind of laughed with her. He looked kind of uncomfortable, though. He was dressed strangely. No bright colors or dream-demon clothes. Baggy khaki shorts and a black sweater that looked too big for him, the sleeves of which hung down over his hands.

Oh.

"I'm, uh, no," Sora grinned. "I'm fine now, actually, don't worry."

Kairi placed one hand on her hip. "So what did you have, anyways? Was it like a cold or the flu or something?"

Riku clicked the latch on his lock, turning the dial a few times to make sure it didn't come undone, and tightened the straps on his backpack.

Sora's eyes widened and he gulped a little, coughing once very quietly and fisting his visible hand. "I, uh – " he began awkwardly. Was he supposed to lie? He didn't want anyone to…he just didn't - .

He didn't like lying to people, because he always suspected that they knew he was lying when he said what he said. That people just felt too awkward to point it out to him. But the cast was big and white and itchy and it felt a million times bigger than it was. It felt a million times bigger than he was. He couldn't imagine a person not noticing it like one big zit on a face, like one stain on a white shirt. It was a big white stain on Sora, and he knew he couldn't lie it away, but he kind of hoped that if he starved it for attention it would shrivel up and die like a weed.

Which was a funny thing to say, because Sora really liked dandelions.

But Kairi was still waiting for him to talk, and he didn't know what she meant by "what did you have." He hadn't pre-fabricated a lie. What if there was a rumor going around the school that he was sick? Wouldn't it be easier to go along with that than to make up his own story? Being sick was a lot less awkward than a skin graft. Getting a skin graft meant telling people why you needed one, which meant telling them why your hand was burned. And then he'd be the kid whose parents died in a fire.

(Sora was a bunch of sticks tied together with string) Sora was not made of glass and he didn't want anyone to treat him that way. The way he would treat a kid whose parents died in a fire.

So he ended up just staring at Kairi for a second, feeling like he was breathing through bubble wrap.

On his way past Sora, Riku Tepes did a wonderful thing. He leaned in very swiftly and whispered against Sora's cheek, "I told people you were sick," and for all the world it looked like he was muttering a resentful good morning as he walked by an acquaintance. While Sora's ear was turning red from the stream of hot air, he turned around and shouted back at a rapidly repeating Riku:

"Oh, thanks, so can I get those assignments after school?" One of the only good things that had come from dealing with so many social workers for Sora was that he could lie fluently now. You had to, when they were looking for every excuse to send you to therapy. You practiced smiling in the mirror.

And Riku, who was a teenager and could lie fluently to any adult and often lied to classmates so that they'd leave him the hell alone, just turned around, rolled his eyes and grumbled "Yeah, I guess," like that's what they were really talking about.

Sora smiled a more relaxed sort of smile, turning back to Kairi. He wondered, sometimes, if Riku Tepes even knew that half of the amazing things he did made Sora feel like kissing him full on the mouth, just for the heck of it. Not in a gay way. Just a happy way.

So yeah, kind of a gay way.

Sora turned back to Kairi. "So what was that?"

Kairi wrinkled her nose in a typically cute way. "Um, did you have the flu?"

He shrugged. "No," he replied, "Just a really bad cold." He didn't know what would happen if she saw the cast around his hand, and hoped he wouldn't find out. "You know, sore throat, cough, stuffed nose, puking, the whole deal."

"Aw," Kairi laughed and shook her head, "Ew, too much information! So that's why you bolted for the bathroom on Friday?"

In French, there wasn't much differentiation between a headache and a sickness that stuffed up your head. _J'ai mal à la tête. _I am bad in the head. In sounded funny in English. _J'ai mal au main._ My hand hurts. _J'ai mal au coeur. _My heart hurts.

So maybe if they were speaking French he could say _j'ai mal au main_ and pretend he had carpal tunnel but not in English, so he was wearing a big black sweater near April on a tropical island.

"Ah, yeah," Sora said, "I…felt funny." Which was, at least, mostly true.

He wasn't feeling himself, of course. He had this sort of sick dread because thin cloth bandages could be hidden under fingerless biker gloves. But Kairi was smiling at him, and Kairi wasn't the smartest person, but she was nice and she never hurt anybody with her words, and Sora really liked her. He wished more people were like that. Any person was a good person who didn't want to make other people feel bad.

"Aw," she said sympathetically, cocking her head. "Are you feeling better now?"

He grinned. "Yeah, plenty," he lied. "Thanks!" He hated lying to people, but he didn't want Kairi getting upset.

Riku Tepes had lied for him! It probably wasn't a big deal for Riku, almighty-superior Riku to go lying to the inferior and ignorant fools who plagued his life. Sora giggled and rolled his eyes, heading for biology. Riku was kind of a drama queen, but he was a better friend than he realized. Sometimes he just put Sora in the best moods.

It wasn't until the bell rang that Sora saw his sweater sleeve didn't quite cover the cast, in all probability, Kairi had at least seen the edge of it. It just hadn't occurred to him that it might be showing.

_I think I can, I think I can, I have to because the world won't stop turning._

_

* * *

_

Riku yawned, blinking his eyes open again and licking dry lips, watching orange plumes of dust roll by outside as Dr. Zexion just kept going on about cytoplasm and Louis Pasteur and peas and…genetic things. Of course he could name more, but he didn't like Dr. Zexion, and so refused to. It was Riku's own little mental rebellion. He knew it didn't do anything, but it helped.

Time seemed longer today. Maybe it was just the lab. It always seemed like tiny weights were tied to the clock hands during biology. He had some stupid pop song stuck in his head because someone had been humming it before class started, and just looking at Sora's sweater made him feel itchy and overheated even though he just had on a muscle shirt and shorts.

It wasn't like he was learning anything, anyways. Sometimes he just wished life would fast forward the useless parts like in TV shows. It was Saturday night at a party and then all of a sudden it was the afternoon of a Monday, and school was magically over and done with. It was because nothing ever _happened_ in school.

Course, that probably didn't count as a valid excused absence. "Reason for absence: life to live, drama to survive, better things to do." Denied.

He was sleepier than usual. His mind kept wandering from thing to thing, flitting around and refusing to settle. Like a – well.

A fly was buzzing around one of the windows angrily. People kept staring and pointing at it. They were not, apparently, that great at dealing with actual nature.

He noticed that about people. The way they picked and chose from things. "I love all animals, oh, except I hate bugs except for ladybugs and butterflies." It kind of sucked. People always liked butterflies and ladybugs because they were pretty because people were shallow because ladybugs didn't bite. But nobody liked moths. Even Riku didn't like moths, but he…wanted to.

He stuck his hand through his hair again.

He just kept thinking about that one moth. It wasn't like he'd never seen a dead moth before. It was just that…he didn't know. Just something.

People didn't like flies, either. Maybe that was why he was thinking about the moth again. He wondered if it made him sappy, or girly, or something, that he kept thinking about a dead bug. He wished it would start raining again. It still might; it was spring now and it rained a lot in spring. Sort of.

He looked up at the clock, just like the clocks in every other room. Simple and round and white with black letters and never more than halfway through class. "_8:05__!_" the face seemed to mock him; _"Only thirty more minutes! Thirty minutes, 1800 seconds or 45 suicides. That's all!"_

He was thinking about death way more than was really normal for a seventeen year old non-goth kid. He wasn't really morbid. It wasn't like he thought about knives and stabbing and stuff in context with…death. And it wasn't like he visited graveyards or anything. He was just confused. He was allowed to be confused as long as he knew he was confused.

The fly took off from the wall again, and a couple of people visibly _winced_ as if it was some horrible deadly venomous thing. The housefly buzzed around one of the lights sporadically and ended up touching down a few tables away from Riku on somebody's binder.

Sora was watching it too; he started to smile when he made eye contact with Riku and then looked back at the fly.

"Look Dr. Zexion, it knows you're talking about fly genes!" somebody obnoxious said, and people laughed.

Dr. Zexion smiled sort of grudgingly and sort of sarcastically, raised his eyebrows, and grabbed a stack of paper from his desk. "I'm going to allow you to work in groups of up to three on these packets, but you may work by yourself or you may work in a group of only two, if you so desire," he deadpanned, depositing worksheets on each person's desk as he walked around. Riku rolled his eyes. "I trust you to make your own groups," he continued, "But if you prove unable to form yourselves into groups successfully, or I deem these groups unable to work together, I will make them for you." He sat down without another word, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses and opening up a large book. This was usually the signal for them to start.

One thing Riku admitted, Dr. Zexion sure was a fucking character.

Sora turned his body in the chair to face Riku almost immediately, grinning. He tucked one of his pieces of hair behind his ear with the thumb of his cast hand, since it was unbound.

Riku frowned. "I thought you were trying to hide that," he said, motioning to the plaster.

Sora paused for a second, his hand still behind his ear, until he shrugged. "Yeah, I guess, but it's kind of useless to anyways. I have to wear it for three weeks and there's no way people won't notice. I'll just say…I don't know. Whatever. You know already," he laughedand then looked at the worksheet sparingly.

"…thanks, though," he said quietly. "I mean, for the telling people I'm sick thing." He looked up at Riku and smiled a sincere sort of a smile.

Riku shrugged. "It wasn't my place to tell them anything else. But, um," he looked for something to say that wasn't about phenotypes, "How…uh, how are you?"

Sora licked his lips and perched his chin on his hand, "I dunno, better, right? It doesn't hurt as much. I kind of feel like I should be doing before and after pictures or something." He laughed. The fly came buzzing by his ear and he batted at it without thinking, shaking his head and almost-sneezing. "Hey, do you think anyone even knew I had bandages on my hand before this?" he asked, staring at his cast absently. He wiggled his two loose fingers and made a snort-giggle sound. Riku looked at it too.

"Don't know. People don't notice things. Even I don't notice things." He realized, when he talked, that saying "even I don't notice things" made it seem like he ought to be the exception, and it was funny, because he'd thought he was one. Or had he? He couldn't remember changing how he thought, but he couldn't remember not, either.

"That's not true," Sora chided him jokingly, toeing him in the ankle. "_Stoo-pid_. You know it isn't."

"Boys," Dr. Zexion looked up at them harshly through apathetic marble eyes and cocked one eyebrow. "Work, please."

Sora shook his head, again, and laughed and Riku shook his head and laughed and they started to do the worksheet, and…things felt mostly okay, until English.

* * *

Kairi came up to Riku, at lunch, standing in front of his table awkwardly. She gripped the strap of her purse with one hand, kept trying to push back bangs with the other, and shifting her weight from foot to foot.

"Hey," she said. "I was wondering…I mean, I know it's…" she trailed off, biting the side of her lip. She looked like she didn't want to bother finishing her sentence. "I know it's, like, really none of my business, I mean – " she laughed awkwardly, "I mean I even feel bad for even like _asking_ or something, and I mean I wasn't _going_ to but when I saw he wasn't here – " she sighed.

Riku knew what she was going to ask. Not word-for-word, maybe, but he knew what she was going to ask. Is it true what people were whispering in English, and in third period, and in hallways and bathrooms and over lunch tables. Did Sora the new kid really try to kill himself over the weekend. Did he really slit his wrist, did he really go to the hospital, was it really because he was clinically depressed over moving. Riku didn't remember how it had come up, or see how it did; he didn't hear the machine start to turn or the match being lit. In a way, he was still kind of in denial about it. It was such a horrible TV thing to happen. It was fast, too. He didn't think – he hadn't really, _really_ thought that gossip spread like fire, that people always assumed stupid things.

He knew he told himself they did, but he hadn't thought the world was that awful. Not _really_. People in movies exaggerated everything else, why not this? They yelled at each other and kissed at each other and had babies at each other but _actual_ people didn't do that to actual _other_ people because it was stupid, and only entertaining if you knew it was fake, and - . It wasn't…it didn't seem right.

What kind of a moron could ever come up with the idea that Sora would even attempt something like that? It was _Sora_. He was happy even when he was sad. He'd come in to school the day after being let out and joked about…stuff and made fun of Riku and laughed and smiled.

Riku supposed that high school kids on Destiny Island were starved for drama. It suited them to make up melodramatic _shit_ that didn't even make _sense_ because they'd seen YouTube videos about "emo kids" who cut their wrists and so assumed that any teenager who injured his wrist had attempted suicide and it wasn't fucking fair! Because how the hell did you explain to them that's not what happened without…explaining what really happened? Hadn't Sora said it? "I don't want people to feel uncomfortable." What a fucking selfish thing to say. He'd said it, out loud, and now Riku couldn't explain to Kairi who was, apparently, yet another gossip vulture, that Sora was not suicidal that he was the bravest fucking person Riku knew and – it wasn't…fair.

"…but I mean, he's not here now so is Sora…okay? Did he get upset and leave?" Kairi was saying. "I know it's none of my business but I'm kinda…worried, you know."

"Oh," Riku replied. He hadn't expected Kairi to go asking that. "Yeah," he said, leaning a bored head on one hand and picking at his food. "He's fine. He just had to meet with a guidance counselor or something about his schedule."

Did you hear that, Kairi? About his _schedule_. Not about his emo suicide attempts.

…Sora was in the library.

"Really?" Kairi was saying. "Ugh, that sucks, I hate it how they never let us like, miss class or something because of school stuff. They always have to take up our lunch periods. What a pain."

Sora was in the library sitting in the reference section at a table, staring at a wall full of encyclopedias after telling Riku that he wasn't hungry.

"Yeah, I guess," Riku said. He didn't say anything else, not "bye," not "see you later," not even a cursory wave. He just looked back down at his food and started eating again without making eye contact. Which was how Riku Tepes said "leave."

Sora was in the library sitting in the reference section, at a table, staring at a wall full of encyclopedias after saying he wanted to be alone and trying really hard not to imagine people asking him if he'd tried to kill himself and counting the minutes until school was over, and he could go…someplace and goof off with Riku, and wondering was it really so bad to just say "I burned my hand?"

"It's just," Kairi started talking again, raising her eyebrows and making a "concerned" face. She slid onto the bench across from Riku, planting her elbows on the table. He could smell her from here, a smell like fruity shampoo and too much perfume and girly things; it was too sweet. "Listen," she said. "I was in the girls' bathroom, just now, and," she paused, taking in and letting out a long, quiet breath. "I can't believe I even have to say this," she whispered. "But on one of the stalls someone had written all of this, like, awful stuff about Sora, and…" she sighed. "Well, it wasn't like making fun of him, but it was like 'did Sora seriously slit his wrist' and then somebody wrote 'omg, I don't know,' and then someone else had written something like 'I bet it's because he's adopted,' and I just thought that, you know, since you're his _friend_ you should _know_ that…" she licked her lips, looking up at him and then down at her purse. "I mean, I erased it," she said. Silence stretched between them, propagating itself, and Riku just stared at her with this slightly confused sort of stare that was still mostly angry.

Sora was in the library hating himself for not being willing to tell people to truth and making Riku lie for him. He couldn't assume Riku liked lying, just because he didn't like talking.

"It's only a few people saying that, anyways. Most of the people I talked to don't believe it. It's just like…I don't know, I just…" Kairi took a big breath and dug at the corner of her eye with her palm. Was she crying? Riku couldn't tell.

He knew it was awful, but all he could think of at the moment were terrible jokes and jabs about how many times she can say "like" in one sentence and how many minutes he had until his next block. _Listen, are you doing it to annoy me, or do you actually have a chronic inability not to use "like" as a comma?_ He knew he shouldn't say things like that when she was honestly trying to help.

Riku Tepes did that, sometimes, he thought of things he shouldn't say and then really wanted to say them. His stupid teenage mind thought up stupid dirty jokes, but he didn't say those, either. He liked to think it made him a higher brand of teenager, not saying everything that came into his head. Of course, Sora would probably just call him snobby and then make fun of his eyes or something.

Riku liked Sora. Not in a sexual way (that would be gross), but he respected him. Enjoyed his company, sometimes.

He wished his friend would come out of the library.

He knew it was awful, too, that he was hoping Sora would want to be alone after school. But he hadn't had a Friday to himself in ages. Just because other people needed things from him didn't mean that he suddenly became a selfless person. He still basically hated people. He just had a conscience, was all. Fuck, people needed to stop taking advantage of it. It was the reason he hadn't told Kairi to leave yet.

"Yeah," he said after a while. She smiled at him. "I don't really…yeah, I'll tell him that," Riku said.

(…he just kept…_thinking_ about that _moth_…)

He didn't finish his lunch.

And he fell asleep in study hall.

* * *

Sometimes days felt longer than they had any right to. You sat diligently behind a school desk and stared at your teacher, pacing, for as long as you could, but the clock refused to acknowledge it. By the time last period had rolled around, Sora felt he'd spent more than enough of his day in the school.

He just needed it to be _over_. He was running out of gas. He needed to cheer himself up over the weekend, psyche himself into returning on Monday with his head held high and an explanation ready. He liked having plans. His plan now was explaining things; it seemed good enough.

But not…today.

He yawned, sitting down in the first empty desk he saw, looking at all of the half-assed, bored scribbled lines on the faux-wood surface. Wiggling into the seat a little further, he glanced at the clock (not for the first time today). Well, fifty-five minutes wasn't a very long time, was it? Time passed in jumps for him; it took ages for five minutes to go by, then all of a sudden it was fifteen minutes later.

"Sora?" It was a girl in his sex ed class. Was she in his math class, too? Now he felt bad for not having noticed.

"Yeah?" He smiled at her a bright-bright smile and sat up a little.

"Are you…okay?"

He frowned. Was this…? It wasn't going to be about suicide, was it? Only one person had outright asked him, and he'd scuffed his answer by accident.

_"Some person told me that you…I mean, this sounds silly, but that you tried to cut your wrist, so…?"_

_"Huh? Wh- no, I mean – what? I mean tha-"_

_"I know, I know! It's none of my business, oh God I'm so sorry! I shouldn't have asked! Okay, um, I hope you feel better!"_

It was because it was the first he'd heard of it.

Boy, news traveled _fast_, didn't it? People were looking at him like – like he'd…

…like he was the kid whose parents died in a fire. People were uncomfortable, talking to him, and laughing with him or around him. People spoke quieter, people didn't say mean things to him not even as _jokes_ but it seemed kind of…fast. He had expected, at the worse, that he'd show up in school today, and that would be fine, and then the rumors would start over the weekend. And he'd be prepared for it on Monday.

Not that he'd expected to be accused of suicide. He didn't blame them, really, any of the people with the macabre curiosity about what kind of a person could even try to…take their _own_ life. It was a scary thought.

Sora looked at the boy nearest him; a head of short blond hair. What if somebody told him – just came up behind Sora and whispered in his ear – _that kid cut his wrist on Friday, can you be**lieve** it?_ He'd have no reason to disbelieve it. He barely knew the kid in front of him. Why would he choose to question that? It then became a fact, didn't it; it became a fact that that one boy slumped over in his chair had slit his wrists with a razorblade like in the movies.

He couldn't blame the kids in his class. Not if he could have done the same thing.

He looked back at the girl from his sex ed class, who was looking at him earnestly and smiling. "Yeah, of course!" he laughed. "But jeez, for a Friday this day just won't _end_, you know?" He rolled his eyes and shrugged and she gave him a puzzled sort of a look. Crap, did that make him seem manic depressive? Maybe he was. Today was suddenly seeming fucking hilarious.

"Oh," she said carefully. "I guess so, sure," she coughed, smiling too hard and turning to the other side of her desk to talk to somebody else.

"Um," Sora began and ended. You didn't really casually tell someone "oh about that suicide thing actually it's a lie," did you? He snorted a little laughter, covering his face with his palm and shaking his head when Riku sat down on his left.

Riku didn't say anything.

Sora liked Riku.

"Hey guys," Mr. Leonhart was saying, "Guys!" He tried again. He stood in the front of the classroom glaring hard enough to break glass. "Guys, you need to _quiet_ _down_, I've got something to talk to you about – guys!" he shouted.

So it had taken a few seconds longer than it strictly should have, but people shut up once the relatively grounded, but still relatively _nice_ math teacher started to yell. "Quiet _down_," he said again. Probably for effect.

"I want to talk to you guys about something that I know has been going on in the school, alright?" he asked. Mr. Leonhart crossed his arms, leaning his back against the desk. There was nothing on the white board behind him and he was holding no papers. Sora shifted in his chair uncomfortably and wondered, did news travel that fast did it really travel _that that _fast?

He looked at Riku, because maybe something else had happened in the world, or at least in the school, something to detract from Sora. Something that had nothing to do with him. The world could be amazing, just sometimes, just maybe just now.

"Now," their teacher said, "How many of you have heard from friends or teachers about the graffiti going on in school?"

People were quiet, and heads were bowed; nobody said anything. Of course graffiti happened, graffiti happened all the time. Kids wrote things on bathroom doors. In fact, when Sora had gone to the bathroom earlier that day, there was a fresh scrawling of "sneakypenis" on the wall.

Which was…off-putting.

Mr. Leonhart raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, like so many teachers did, and sighed. "Really? No one? That's surprising," he remarked. "Well, a few teachers here have been subject to some severe…" he paused and licked his teeth, like the words were stuck there, "Some entirely inappropriate and _highly_ offensive homophobic…writing." He paused for a while, completely still like a New York statue, and started again. "And I just wanted to talk to you guys about that, and about homophobia in general, okay? I mean, the principal asked us to, but it is an important subject – " he cut off and glared at someone on the other side of the room who was talking. "_Girls_."

The world was funny sometimes. Sometimes it avoided a big problem for you only to go crashing into one that you were entirely trying to avoid. Sora shot a glance at Riku to see if he was even looking at him. Riku just looked bored, staring at the door and playing with a piece of his hair.

"You guys know that about ten percent of the population is gay, right?" their teacher was saying, licking his lips and breathing through his nose.

Sora winced. The seconds passed slowly like pinpricks, _stick stick stick _and _tick tick tick_, and every part of his head was hurting.

"So how many kids are in this class? Twenty-five, right?" Mr. Leonhart said, sweeping his eyes over the kids. He laughed. "So even in here, statistically at least, two of you are gay or bisexual, yeah?" and his students laughed nervously and looked at each other and shifted around in their squeaky blue chairs. "And one of you is kind of on the fence about it," he said to more awkward giggling.

Of course now was when Riku chose to look at Sora. It wasn't an accusing look, but Sora started to squirm under those eyes. They were too clear and too sharp, like pieces of glass; they didn't seem like _eyes_ and Riku had turned them on him but he wasn't glaring. Sora met his eyes and Riku smiled, kind of, like he was out of practice. Sora smiled back, kind of, and then stuck his tongue out jokingly to break the awkward.

Riku rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, snapping his eyes to their teacher when Mr. Leonhart threatened to give them a "_Boys_."

"And I really doubt that anybody in here would write things like that, but – " he paused, "Okay, raise your hands if you've ever heard somebody use 'that's so gay' as an insult, or call somebody a fag or – yeah," he said as hands began to lift, "You see? And that makes it seem like it's okay. It makes mild homophobia an everyday thing and it makes it just that much harder for any gay person to be honest about it, do you guys – Phil, if you have to go to the bathroom, just _go_," he said, waving towards the door. A kid bolted.

Sora twirled a pencil between his fingers and looked out the window. It had been four minutes. _Four_ minutes.

"This is a pretty important topic to me, okay? I don't want to bore you guys with facts and data, but I just wanted to show you – uh, crap, where'd I – " he went behind his desk and opened a drawer.

The air smelled thick and flowery and hot; was it really always this hot on islands? Did it really never snow? It would be funny, when Christmas came, and there were still palm trees. He wondered if Christmas was really depressing here because it never snowed. He wondered…he was tired.

Mr. Leonhart was copying some sort of chart off of a sheet of paper. It had two columns, and four rows; he labeled the columns "gay students" and "straight students." He labeled the rows "considering suicide," "making a suicide plan," "attempted suicide," and "requiring medical attention for a suicide attempt."

"Really wish my overhead wasn't broken," he muttered. He had pretty awful handwriting, for a teacher. His Ks looked like Ls and Cs squished together, his As looked like Ns, and his Ms were barely even letters. Somebody laughed and Mr. Leonhart smiled, starting to fill in percentages.

In a beam of afternoon light flecks of dust shone gold and floated by like a river of old.

Sora settled in for a long, silent wait.

* * *

On the walk home, dandelions were the only flowers and mosquitoes littered the air like dust. Sora sighed and ran a hand through messy hair, though it got stuck halfway in and he had to pull it out.

He looked at his good hand in slanted light, wondering how long it would be before he was toasted golden on the oven-half of the island. Northern France wasn't really known for its great tanning spots. He stared until a building he passed blocked out the sun.

"Hey," Riku said, tapping his shoulder. "Why are you spacing out?"

Sora jumped a little and turned his head to look at Riku, who had his eyebrows raised and those glass-glass eyes trained on him. He shook his head. "I dunno," he grumbled. "Haven't you ever had just a really, like a _really_ bad day?" he asked in earnest, scratching at his ear.

"Yeah, duh," Riku said. Sora took some small pride in the fact that Riku seemed to hate everything but him. He talked freely when it was just him and Sora. Riku laced his fingers and put them on top of his head, his elbows sticking out like stunted (moth) wings. He grinned a real shit-eating grin and laughed. "But sometimes, when I have a uniquely terrible day, I end up in a really good mood just because…I don't know," he shrugged, still smiling, "I just find it funny. Somehow. That things can suck this badly, and then I sort of calm down…or, sometimes," he said, his smile dying, "Usually I just get really angry. You're handling it better than I do."

Sora nodded, licking his lips as they turned onto the dirt road. Light was yellow today. Everywhere he went, light was yellow. "I know what you mean," he said carefully. "Like…there are carpet slaves in India, so compared to that it isn't so…" he ventured.

"Yeah," Riku said, letting his hands down and sticking his thumbs in his pockets. "I'm, uh," he looked away, "Sorry your day…sucked, or…yeah."

Now Sora laughed, shoving Riku with his shoulder. Riku stumbled just a little, laughed and shoved Sora back, lightly. But hard enough so that Sora knew he wasn't made of glass. "This week, in half-assed sincerity…" Sora began.

"What? Oh, screw you," Riku stuck his tongue out. "I'm new to this…um,"

"Nice crap?"

"Yeah."

Sora shook his head, and spikes of hair caught the yellow light; _Like spears_, he thought. He sighed again. He didn't…whatever.

He suspected Riku of hiding a really great friend underneath his glass-glass eyes. The kind of guy who thought about other people more than he wanted to admit. But sometimes Sora wondered if he just looked for himself in other people, anyways. Because Sora always thought about how other people felt, and…anyways.

He looked down at the ground and the mosquito that zipped by. The sound of waves roared dully in the background, like muffled thunder, and no matter how hard he tried his day still sucked and he was still unhappy. It was like a little pulling in his stomach and his throat that didn't go away.

When they got to his house, Sora just went right up the stairs without saying anything. Because it wasn't fair.

Riku just dropped his backpack next to Sora's and watched him head for his room for a few seconds, impassively. He shrugged and followed after him at a leisurely pace.

_Forty-nine percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual students are considering or thinking about suicide._

Sora was a beautiful person. But Sora looked like he was about to break. There was someone Riku didn't know living inside of Sora.

Riku liked Sora.

He followed Sora into his room and stood in the doorway, glancing at the TV and gaming system in the corner, dusting over. "Sora?"

Sora just wiped at the corner of his eye with his too-big, ridiculously hot sweater and went over to his bed, falling down on it with a _fwump_ and staring at the wall. He sandwiched himself between the covers like a cocoon, with only his face visible, after arranging the blankets for a minute or two with awkward cloth sounds. His eyes were red.

"Sora…?"

Sora didn't say anything. His eyes got redder.

Riku came to sit by the side of the bed, knees bent and arms draped over them. He leaned his head back and touched the cover covering Sora's knee. "Have you been hold- um…are you upset?"

There was a little rustle when Sora nodded.

"Oh. 'Kay," Riku said calmly. He snorted. "You've had a pretty shit couple of weeks."

Rustle.

He licked his lips and started to wiggle his toes, watching the fabric of his sneakers bulge and stretch. He sighed. Sweat was sticking his arms to his sides.

"Well," he said after a while, because he wasn't about to give a pep talk, "I'm gonna play video games. Do you mind?"

Rustle.

"Well, don't blame me if I beat your high scores," Riku said, crawling forward to turn the television and game system on and grabbing a controller.

There was a muffled snort of laughter and a "Yeah, because I care so much," from the blankets, and Riku smiled.

There were a lot of moths in the world.

* * *

A/N: About the circus. Listen. It is ridiculous to put that in this story. It is going into another story. I have already started it, but uhm, I've never written (grown-up) Axel before so...right. Well. Even I don't care.

Point is that I MET TAYLOR MALI BECAUSE DID I TELL YOU I MET TAYLOR MALI AND THAT WE TALKED AND THAT HE'S ACTUALLY JUST AS AWESOME IN REAL LIFE AND THAT HE SAW MY HAND AND I'D WRITTEN STUFF I HAD TO DO WITH LITTLE CHECKBOXES AND HE SAW THE CHECKBOXES AND WAS LIKE "LOL :D" ONLY NOT IN SO MANY WORDS AND TOOK A PICTURE OF MY HAND WITH HIS PHONE AND PUT IT ON HIS BLOG YES THAT IS MY HAND ON TAYLOR MALI'S BLOG ALSO HE MADE ME READ A COUPLE OF MY SENTENCES FROM HIS PROMPTS AND HE LIKED THEM BOTH SO ANYWAYS HOW WAS YOUR WEEK

YOU SEE THIS IS WHY I TOLD YOU TO IGNORE THIS PART OF THE CHAPTER


	9. We've Got One More to Go

* * *

**And the Last One Nearly Killed Me.**

**

* * *

**

A/N: (FYI, the title isn't referring to the number of chapters left.)

First things first. I was on a train the other day, and a gay couple got on at one of the stops - confirmed gay, though, not just a couple of flamboyant guys; there was kissing. I'm not saying that's unusual or weird for me to see, but what I _am_ saying is that _one of them looked exactly like Zack with shorter hair OH SNAP_

I went there.

Seriously, I was almost bug-eyed.

Second things second.

Do you know why these chapters take so long? Because I write them on the FF server alone, in the documents manager. Do you know what that means? It means that if I accidentally click "X" instead of "minimize" in the corner, unsaved work is lost. It means that if my internet decides to flip out and just commit ritual sepuku, my work is lost. It meanst that if fanfiction _randomly decides to log me out instead of letting me save 1500 words of writing when I hit the little green "save" button and **then** logging me out **I lose a day's worth of writing**_. I then become too angry to think straight and have to take a break before coming back to rewrite it all.

I know it's irrational. I know I should use one of the three word processors on this computer. Blame my hair.

(EDIT (minor spoiler, I guess): yayme2012 rightly pointed out that Kairi was not nearly drunk enough to have almost died. I've hopefully fixed that, and if not, advice is appreciated, laleela. But if you've already read the chapter - does it send you updates if I replace one? I dunno, anyways - you don't have to again because it seriously has no affect on the plot at all.

Uh...okay, by "fixed that" I um, don't mean it's a good thing that - WHATEVER. I'ma go nurse my headache, you bunny-nosed tail-munchers.)

So yeah try and guess what my favorite book is.

* * *

_" 'Whomever I touch, I send back to the earth from whence he came,' the snake spoke again. 'But you are innocent and true, and you come from a star...' "_

- **Antoine de Saint-Exupery**, _The Little Prince,_ p. 72

* * *

Riku Tepes couldn't fall asleep, and it was killing him. He'd tried everything possible. He always seemed to fall asleep after Sora, which didn't make any sense. Sora should have been the one kept up all night worrying about...things and stuff and people. But it was Riku Tepes who couldn't fall asleep.

On the bed above him, Sora snorted and kicked in his dream, muttering incoherently. "V-" he grumbled. "Valm- vamlumtime..." he smacked his lips together with a "mnam, mnam," sound.

Riku's eyes stung, and the bags underneath them felt heavy. Staring up at the ceiling, he felt like his loose thin skin was sagging down into the socket of his eyeball. It wasn't that he wasn't tired. But there was a window. If he didn't fall asleep within oh, say, half an hour of turning off the lights, his brain didn't go off. He kept thinking about things. It was awful. He couldn't turn off his thinking, which was kind of funny, he thought, since so many people he knew never even turned it on. Maybe that was why they always got good rest.

He knew he was being kind of a prick when he thought things like that, but he didn't really care. Nobody was monitoring his thoughts. Screw the...just screw the whole world.

Okay, he was definitely getting sleepy.

"N-no-um," Sora was mumbling, "I- I saved ev'rybody, I - I saved _ev'_ryone 'cept fur - fur - mnam," he groaned and flopped over on the bed, making little rustling noises in the blankets. "No-o! Y- you _can't_!"

That about killed Riku.

Even in his dreams Sora Goodwin only thought about saving other people. Rescuing the whole goddamn world.

That just about goddamn killed Riku Tepes.

He wanted to crawl into the bed and slap him, or maybe just stay there, sitting on Sora until he woke up, like a really big cat. That would be weird, but he was tired. He didn't think much of it.

Of course he woke up the next morning with morning wood, which was a fucking hassle considering it was a sleepover and he didn't even remember dreaming or having lewd thoughts or _anything_. It went away fast but it was fucking embarrassing. He didn't know why.

* * *

Sunday evening brought one of the most ridiculous mass PTO emails in the history of West Destiny Island High School, which was pretty hard to do.

_Dear Parents and Students of WDIHS:_

_We understand that many students and their parents have been hearing rumors about a student at the school who recently underwent surgery. The Parent Teacher Organization would like to formally clear up any confusion that students and parents may have about this inciden. The student had a delicate operation performed on his hand and wrist last weekend, and he along with his parents/guardian have expressed a wish to be discreet about the matter. We ask that the student body be respectful of their wishes, as it is a private matter._

_Thank You,_

_West Destiny Island High School Paretn-Teacher Organization_

Apparently the somebody West Destiny Island High School Parent-Teacher Organization was getting capitalization-happy with the emails. And was not able to spell very well.

It wasn't very professional, telling people not to talk about it because the "parents and/or guardian" asked it to be treated with discretion. It was probably one of the most ridiculously uncalled for things he'd seen lately. It was just, it was fucking ridiculous.

Riku fell asleep kind of laughing to himself.

* * *

Monday morning was just like any other, which was kind of a dumb thing to say. Mornings weren't "just like any other." Mornings just were, and they had patterns. Riku hoped to Hell his mornings didn't repeat themselves like he was stuck in purgatory. He'd had a dream where he'd been stuck in purgatory. He just sat in a white room with shelves, and the shelves only had white food on them like powdered sugar and onions and clear bottles of oil. It was horrible.

But sometimes he did feel stuck on a loop. Because mornings did kind of look alike. His mouth always tasted like those disgusting toaster-oven blueberry waffles he ate every morning, which tasted like piss, but it was either that or oatmeal. Of course he brushed his teeth, but half the time he didn't bother to use toothpaste, so his teeth were clean but his mouth still tasted like piss smelled. Ugh-ugh-ugh.

Looking out the window of the bus, he saw its big rectangular shadow on the ground, whizzing by on the road with them. It was like a tiny thin blanket, fitting to the shape of the sidewalk curb and the fences it touched. He could see the little outlines of the windows in the bus' shadow, and even a blurry dark sort of lump that was his head.

He hated Mondays.

--

He yawned, legs crossed and sitting on top of the wall in front of the school. Riku scrolled through his music absentmindedly. All of his songs sucked today.

"Hey," Sora said, levering himself onto the wall with his hands and leaning over Riku's shoulder to see what he was doing. "What's up?" he asked, a little too close to Riku's face.

"Hn," Riku said, shrugging and turning his mp3 player off. He wound his headphones around it and stuck it in a sweatshirt pocket. "Are you...uh, doing better?" he asked because it seemed like the thing he had to say. His mouth felt weird, forming those words, like they were shaped wrong. He knew deep down inside that he didn't really care.

"Huh?" Sora asked, tilting his head to the side. He'd seemed fine on Saturday, when he apparently woke up a good hour before he woke Riku up. By placing the cat square on his stomach, ironically enough. He'd laughed and torn the covers off of Riku's body, even though it was _Saturday_, and just put a ten-pound cat on his body. _"Riku Riku Riku wake up Riku it's Saturday! Let's go get slushies for breakfast!"_

That Sora kid, Riku thought, was pretty damn okay.

"Well, I mean," Riku said awkwardly. "Are you like...okay to be in school now?" He bit his lip and looked up at Sora. Then he realized that was fucking girly and stopped.

"What? You mean the rumors?" Sora shrugged. "I know, I was thinking about that on Saturday after you left." He grunted a little. "I know this might sound stupid or...I don't know, _bipolaire_, whatever that is in English, but...I don't really mind, you know?"

Riku frowned. That did not sound right at _all_. As far as he knew Sora, which was farther than he had two weeks ago but was still not very far at all, he hated it when other people said mean things about him. He hated it when it was his fault other people were uncomfortable around him. He hated causing trouble.

Sora wasn't on meds or anything, right? Maybe after the surgery they'd given him happy pills, just in case, or something, and now he was acting weird. Was that how happy pills worked? Hell if Riku knew.

"You don't...mind...?"

Sora shook his head. "I mean, I'm kind of...I don't like how people are getting kind of, you know, needlessly upset, but it's...petty, I guess? To worry about myself. I mean, _I _know I didn't try to kill myself, so what does it...matter? To me, anyways. I just wish people wouldn't feel so...weird, about it."

Riku nodded very slowly, fingering one of the straps of his backpack. He licked his lips. It was too hot outside. It was supposedly raining on the other side of the island. Stupid rain shadow. It was always only ever raining on one half of the island.

"Yeah, I guess," he said to Sora, even though he didn't really think so. He always seemed to be doing that lately, saying things he didn't really mean and not saying the things he wanted to. Maybe it was because he finally had somebody to say and not-say them to, which was kind of a depressing thought. For example, he thought Sora's logic was crap. Sora spent such a long time thinking and re-thinking about the things he knew that it hadn't occurred to him to think about himself. It was like he was unhappy and he didn't even _know_ it. It was always "don't make other people feel uncomfortable" and "don't let everyone else get affected," and sure, it seemed like the noble thing but ultimately it was just fucking up his stupid life.

"I mean," he said, even though it had been a good thirty seconds of silence and assumed that the conversation was dead, "People probably forgot already."

Sora looked at him very seriously for a second. Riku would have thought he was being sarcastic if it wasn't for the fact that he knew Sora basically couldn't do sarcasm. He leaned in far, almost touching Riku's nose with his, his brow furrowed. He started to smile. "You think so?" he said, entirely too close.

Riku found himself thinking, again, about what would happen if he kissed Sora. Not that he wanted to, really, but he wondered what would happen was all. It was the same way he thought about getting stabbed with exacto knives. Only now it wasn't _what if he slipped, or dropped it, or forgot where it was _- it was different. It was _what if he leaned in that last inch, or pulled Sora, or passed it off as a joke_ and he kept thinking about how he'd never kissed anybody before. He wondered what it felt like. It wasn't about _what if it slipped_, it was about _what if Sora didn't mind_.

Some part of his brain, locked away tight in his sick little imagination, was a box that screamed _I am all the important things!_ and told him to lean forward.

The thing about Riku Tepes was that if he was going to do anything new, he needed a lot of outside encouragement first.

"Get offa me," he said roughly, shoving Sora to the side and hopping off the wall. He headed for the mouth-door of the school. He had to get to...somewhere. He knew it sounded stupid to say it, that it was one of those things that a person couldn't really deny because denying it meant you were lying and admitting it meant you were telling the truth and you _couldn't_ win. But he wasn't flustered. He was weirded out. He was curious, about the whole gay thing. He wondered if Sora thought about kissing him, like really honestly kissing him because he was _Riku_ and not because he was curious what it felt like to push two pairs of lips together.

He knew it was silly to think that, just because they were both boys and Sora was maybe-gay.

Maybe he was just egocentric and he wanted to believe someone would see that in him. What a horribly teenage thing to think, but there it was. Riku admitted he thought wrong things, sometimes. But at least he knew when he...shit.

* * *

_" 'To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox, like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...' "_

- **Antoine de Saint-Exupery**, _The Little Prince_, p. 80

* * *

Riku and Sora sat together at lunch, as per usual, and there were no weird glances and no whispering.

It was weird.

It didn't feel right, to Riku.

There was no big resolution, and Sora didn't stand up on a chair in the cafeteria and shout that he didn't try to commit suicide, he burned his hand, and he didn't then deteriorate into a big speech about life and how brave he was and how he wished they would only accept him for who he was or some shit.

It had begun very, very quickly, in the space of two hours like the start of a friendship bracelet. All of the strings taped to a clipboard and placed on the ground with an even starting point. But teenagers had short attention spans, and had abandoned it, leaving strings unraveled and tapering off to vague and undefined points. It did not stop as quickly as it started. People were such spazzes.

It had seemed like such a big deal on Friday.

Sora put his arm on the table between them, wiggling a little. He looked at his hand with its fingers stretched out, like it wanted to be a starfish.

"I know this sounds stupid," he said after a while. Long enough that Riku had started tallying homework assignments in his head. "But I think that every morning I wake up, it's kind of awesome."

"What?" Riku said sarcastically, "Like you're glad you didn't _die_ or something?"

Of course Riku knew that wasn't what Sora meant. He didn't know what Sora meant, but he didn't mean that, and Riku was afraid that this was going to be another "living is my revenge" bullshit rant.

"No," Sora said. _See?_ said Riku's brain. "I mean...okay, yeah, it sounds dumb. But it's just kind of awesome that...I don't know. Things didn't fall apart at night. That all the, the atoms rushing around and hitting each other and stuff, they've all stayed in basically the same places instead of just randomly falling apart. I mean, nothing changes, not really, even though the universe is s'pposed to be this really random place. So...I - I don't know."

Riku shook his head a little and smiled to himself with his arms crossed and his elbows on the table, shaking a sheet of white hair out of his face. "Yeah," he said after a while. "No, I get that. People complain about how...everything...changes, and..." he felt incredibly stupid saying it. He sounded like _Sora_, and he always told himself that Sora sounded fucking stupid, guessing at all of the things nobody ever teaches you. Pulling shit out of your ass as you said it, instead of thinking about it. He kind of hated himself for it.

It was funny. Up until now, Riku hated everybody but himself.

"And even though they say that, it's kind of strange how little it does...change," he muttered, because he felt like he had to finish the sentence.

Sora was quiet for a little while, and Riku briefly entertained bitter thoughts like _Oh, now when **I'm** saying supposedly deep crap you're gonna get pissed? Little hypocritical, huh, Sora?_ Which was of course wrong. Like-freaking-always.

Sora started to smile. "Huh," he said finally, turning to face Riku full-on. "I hadn't thought about it like that. I...huh." He sounded more careful than usual. He sounded nice.

He perched his chin on his hand and nudged Riku with his shoulder. "Thanks," he said quietly, sort-of-graciously.

Riku snorted. "Yeah," he said, trying to focus on tallying homework assignments.

_I am all the important things!_

"You know what, Riku Tepes," Sora said, crossing his legs on the lunch table bench and grinning, "_You_...are a pretty okay guy."

_I am all the important things!_

Riku sort-of laughed, very awkwardly, and tucked some hair behind his ear more out of habit than anything else. Didn't seem right, that there couldn't be any sort of satisfying conclusion to this crap about suicide. Sora was acting just like before, and so was he - . Kind of.

**_I am all of the important things!_**

"Yeah," Riku said, throwing his trash in a nearby bin and slinging his backpack onto his shoulder. "I have to go to the - bathroom so I'll - see you. Later."

"Oh," Sora said from down there, looking a little surprised. "Uh, yeah, okay. Uh, um, wait!"

"Hm?" Riku hadn't moved.

"Uh, there's this almost-the-end-of-the-year-before-finals party thing that Kairi told me about, so I'm dragging you to it since we usually hang out Fridays, okay?" he said casually.

"Whatever, yeah," Riku said, heading for the doors. He had to get fucking control of himself. Sora thought about everybody but himself and it was killing him. It was killing both of them.

* * *

_" 'But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more.' "_

- **Antoine de Saint-Exupery**, _The Little Prince_, p. 83

* * *

Riku had these little fantasies of real life, only better, sometimes. He hadn't had very many close friends for quite a long time, so he didn't know how to deal with the one he was getting. He didn't know how to deal with people.

In Riku's fantasy, he got to tell Sora all of the things he really honestly thought about him. All of the ugly nasty things he wasn't willing to say out loud. Some of the things that he wanted to say, but couldn't because he didn't know what would happen.

Things like it's unfair to keep on telling me all of the things you think about life, and not asking about what I ever think. Things like it's unfair to keep trying to change my opinion, when you never change yours. Things like just because you've been through more shit than I have does not make you more relevant.

Things like I hate being around you because I'm a horrible person and you're a beautiful person and it makes me feel like shit.

Sure, it sounded very good in his head, it sounded very elegant and neat. It sounded like one of those big, dramatic speeches that people in soap operas and teen dramas made, but with fewer exclamation points. Only in soap operas and teen dramas, after the person was finished speeching they got to hold up their hands to make the person they were speeching at shut up and they said "No, no, I don't want to hear it" and then slammed a door.

Riku wasn't stupid. He knew it didn't work like that.

If he wanted to figure out how to have a decent friendship, he couldn't say all these things to Sora, because Sora might misunderstand or be hurt or just have the generally wrong reaction. He'd do something surprising, and Riku didn't want to risk it.

So he thought about it the whole week. He spent a whole, actual week thinking about somebody else, actually thinking. For once Riku Tepes had a reason to be totally silent.

* * *

_"The next planet was inhabited by a tippler. This was a very short visit, but it plunged the little prince into deep dejection._

_'What are you doing there?' he said to the tippler, whom he found settled down in silence before a collection of empty bottles and also a collection of full bottles._

_'I am drinking,' replied to tippler, with a lugubrious air._

_'Why are you drinking?' demanded the little prince._

_'So that I may forget,' replied the tippler._

_'Forget what?' inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him._

_'Forget that I am ashamed,' the tippler confessed, hanging his head._

_'Ashamed of what?' insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him. _

_'Ashamed of drinking!' The tippler brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence._

_And the little prince went away, puzzled._

_'The grown-ups are certainly very, very odd,' he said to himself, as he continued on his journey."_

- **Antoine de Saint-Exupery**, _The Little Prince_, p. 50 - 52

* * *

Time, of course, did not care. He'd come to no real conclusions about Sora, except that maybe Riku was being unreasonable about the whole "you never ask about me" bit because nobody could read minds, by the time "Zack's PRE-SUMMER BASH LOL" (according to the email) rolled around.

(It was that morbid curiosity that made him click on the forwarded email, which was difficult to understand because all of the words were chatspeak and he had trouble telling which things were smiley faces, but he managed to glean a time, at least.)

It was in a forest, which was a pretty stupid idea. Riku didn't know about anyone else, but he had sure never had a fun time in a forest with a bunch of teenagers around. Fuck, they were teenagers!

People milled around one little clearing in the one little forest-reserve (which was, of course, on the wet side of the island, but it wasn't a far walk), talking and giggling. A couple of kids were trying to rub a couple of sticks together to make a fire, pretty much fruitlessly. Kids walked around in between the trees, and it was clear that despite them being in a forest near dusk, nobody had put on bug spray. Mosquitoes buzzed in the air like dust, and people seemed surprised when they got bit. But nobody wanted to smell like bug spray at a _super-cool party_.

Riku had on bug spray and sun block. He smelled like summer camp, but he didn't give a crap.

He sat down by the base of one of the trees, leaning up against rough bark and letting his shoes slide out, feet half-buried by dry leaves. Everything smelled like dirt, like fresh vegetables.

Speaking of which, Sora had abandoned him, despite dragging him there. Riku could see him, too, standing with a blue plastic cup of soda in his hand talking to a girl with short brown hair and laughing like he was high.

Riku Tepes wasn't jealous, exactly, but he was kind of pissed. _All this crap about friendship and sticking together and now you want to go talk to girls. Fuck, I always followed you home when you were upset about stupid shit! But no, when you're fine, it's all good, huh?_

He rolled his eyes and to play with the hem of the white and yellow vest he'd ended up putting on over his black shirt. He needed pockets and his jeans had really small ones that didn't fit his mp3 player. It looked really stupid, but hell if he cared.

"Hey!" Sora said, coming over to sit next to him.

Riku rolled his eyes and didn't say anything.

"Wha-at?" Sora asked, nudging him as he plopped down on a nearby log.

"Nothing," he muttered.

"Are you sure?" Sora moved a little closer, and the smell of farmers' markets and vegetables grew stronger, like pumpkins or fall. They'd cut down a little part of his cast, so it was mostly just his hand now.

"I don't...like parties," Riku said awkwardly, looking in the opposite direction. Mosquitoes were like little anti-fireflies, silhouettes in the sun, buzzing around. Just looking at them made him feel kind of itchy. He scratched his leg.

Sora laughed, touching the back of his head to the bark of the tree. "Oh, I _see_. It's just so awful, hanging around other people."

"Shut up," Riku grumbled, smiling a little and nudging Sora's knee with his own.

"Well? This not enough reason to kill yourself?" Sora giggled. It seemed funny, that he'd joke about that, him of all people.

"Oh," Riku said, "Plenty of reason, really, but you know me. I'd hate to be a statistic."

His friend laughed and ran a hand through his hair, stretching his legs out as far as he could go. "You know," he said, "My mom told me once that Japanese people take off their shoes when they commit suicide." He sounded a little more somber, now, at least. He'd stopped smiling.

Well fuck, that was random.

"Really?" Riku asked. "I thought they only did that when they, like, entered a building or something."

Sora shook his head. "Well, yeah, that too, but when they kill themselves they'll go up to the rooftop of a building or to a lake or something, take off their shoes and...take the plunge. You know?"

Riku shrugged. "Yeah," he said, "I get it."

They were quiet for a little while. People were shouting and laughing, and bugs in the forest were making bug noises. Riku wondered what time it was.

"I wonder why," Sora said, "Because it's not like you're going to be very concerned with manners when you're about to kill yourself. It's kind of weird, I guess." He made eye contact with Riku. His eyes looked a little less blue, now, even though Riku might have thought they would stand out. Blue-blue eyes didn't stand out in a forest, they were subdued by it. His eyes looked almost grey-green.

"Maybe they just wanted to die without wearing shoes," Riku offered. He didn't really know what that meant. It seemed obvious to him.

Sora stared at him more, maybe a little harder, maybe a little closer. And, after a minute or two, "...yeah." He smiled and looked at his own feet. "Think so?" He wiggled his toes; Riku could see the stretchy fabric of his sneakers bulge. "It makes sense."

Riku frowned. "Really?"

"Yeah. You said it, man."

"I was making shit up."

Sora looked at him again and laughed. "But, don't you think it would be nice?" He kicked off one shoe, to reveal a very pale pink foot, and dug it under some of the leaves. "To be able to feel things with your feet." He blinked slowly and smiled.

"I think," he said, "That when I die, I would like to die without any shoes on." Riku looked at him strangely.

"I mean," he added, "If I have the choice. When I'm all old and wrinkly. I think I want to die without any shoes on, so that I can feel things with my feet."

Riku looked at the anti-fireflies again; the sun was almost gone. It was that time of day when sunlight came in at an angle, all slanted. The tiny little bits of crap and dust floating through the air made it visible, almost physical, like a flashlight beam in a dusty attic. But it was a very different kind of light. Riku wondered why sunlight felt so different when it was the same idea. He was tired.

"Okay," he said blandly. He knew Sora probably wanted a comment along the lines of "wow that's fucking deep" but he didn't feel like it. Sora said things like this so much it wasn't really that fun anymore.

He knew he was bullshitting himself.

Riku wanted to die without shoes on, too.

"Hey Riku," Sora said, poking his thigh. He had put on sunscreen too. His skin was a little oily, but not sweaty. "You don't really give yourself credit for it, but I think you're a better thinker than you seem like."

"What?"

"I dunno," he shrugged. "But this is the second time this week we've had a conversation like this."

Riku frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"You know, Monday? Waking up and still being...sticking yourself together?"

"Oh," Riku said. "Yeah." He stopped talking for a little while and they watched people stumble almost drunkenly through the trees and the little slanting beams of sunsetlight. Above them, trees whispered to each other little meaningless non-words.

"I like this conversation better," he whispered, fancying his voice similar to the trees. He wanted to whisper things high above people who weren't listening. He just wanted to.

So of course, Sora did something shit-weird. He sort of fell over to the side so that his head was on Riku's lap and his legs were curled up by his chest. He giggled. "Yeah," he replied, matching Riku's whisper, "Me too."

Riku remembered one of the first horribly uncomfortable things Sora had done, crawling into his lap and pulling his hair away from his forehead.

_"Holy shit! You actually have a forehead! I thought you would have, I dunno, whirring machinery up here like cyborgs in the movies!"_

He'd said something like that.

Riku had been completely disgusted. Now he barely cared that another boy's head was on his lap.

Did that make him gay? It didn't, did it? Sora rolled onto his back so he could look straight up at Riku and stick his tongue out.

And yeah, Riku thought about kissing him again, just because it would be funny. Because his lips were feeling itchy and Sora was at an awkward angle, and he was sleepy and only two people had put on sunscreen and bug spray even though they were all in a forest filled with mosquitoes, and Sora was still only wearing one shoe and he didn't seem to care.

Sora was a boy and Riku was a boy. They were on the same side of the line, and Riku knew that girls were on the other side of the line and the whole point of puberty was to get curious about the line, and to step up to it and to get curious about the _other side_. You were _normal_ then, wanting something you weren't, you were normal.

Riku Tepes was seventeen years old and he'd never had a crush on a girl.

Sora Goodwin was seventeen years old and he was only wearing one shoe.

Fuck, but he was beautiful inside.

He made a stupid face at Riku and Riku made a stupid face at him, and trees whispered and people shouted. There was drunken laughter close by. Then it was even closer, like someone had broken through another one of their little worlds, and Riku had to register it. He looked up.

Kairi had a bottle of something in her hand. It was mostly empty, and what was left inside was clear like water. Even though he knew it wasn't. Kairi had fallen over, staring at something just above her head with glazed and half-closed eyes. She made a choking noise and closed them.

There was a glass bottle in her hand, and it was mostly empty, which sounded ridiculous because that sounded like something a drunk person would have, so.

Riku frowned, and out of the corner of his eye saw Sora look a little puzzled and sit up, leaning his back on Riku's shoulder (he didn't know why it was important to note that but it was, it was warm, but anyways). Sora licked his dry lips and furrowed his eyebrows.

"Is she...?" he began. "I mean..."

"Um," Riku said, "Yeah, I mean, yeah, sure. I'm sure...I mean, she can't be drunk or anything, I mean..."

"Yeah..." Sora said. They were both thinking it.

_People we know don't really get drunk. Teenagers don't do that. Well, the do, but not **here**. Inner-city kids or something, but not people we **know**, nobody's that **stupid**._

Which brought Riku back to

_People don't really **die** in fires._

"Sora," he said finally, "I think you should put your other shoe on."

Sora did.

They stood up.

"Kairi?"

She rolled over onto her side and retched once.

"Um, Kairi, are you okay?"

Riku hung back a little, just a little behind Sora. Kairi creased her eyebrows, eyes still shut, and pulled one of her legs up to her chest with the rustle of dry leaves.

"Oh," Sora said. Riku still didn't say anything. High over them trees whispered nonsense. Around them people shouted it. His shoes were too hot.

"Mmm," she moaned uncomfortably.

"Yeah..." Sora said. He turned around. Sora looked at Riku looked at Sora. "Riks, do you have your cellphone?" he asked, pressing his lips together. _"Riks"_? Seriously? What the Hell was that?

"Uh..." Riku thought about it. He had some just-in-case money in one of the pockets of his stupid vest, and his mp3 player in the other pocket of his stupid vest, so... "No," he said.

"Oh, okay," Sora said. A couple of other kids were walking by near them, probably heading for the throng just past a line of trees.

Sora asked them if he could borrow a cellphone.

They asked what it was for.

He said it was because Kairi was drunk.

They asked So?

He said he wanted to call an ambulance.

They said they didn't have cellphones.

So did the next person.

And the one after that, and the one after that.

"Sora," Riku said after a while. Kairi hadn't moved, unless you counted rolling over to the other side and then getting so still you had to check and make sure she was still breathing. "Nobody's going to lend you a cellphone to call the police."

"But I'm not trying to call the police, I'm trying to call an amb-"

"It's the same thing. EMTs show up, start asking questions, and people don't want to have to go to the hospital for drinking and have their parents know." Riku sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It was really hot in the forest, and really humid, too, like breathing in water.

"But - "

"Sora."

Sora, who was kneeling down with his hand on her cheek, went quiet for a little while. He pursed his lips and looked down at his shoes, toeing around a stick on the forest floor. It was almost dark.

"I know," he said. He didn't look happy about it.

Kairi tried to sit up, suddenly, her eyes open and maybe shaking a little. She leaned on one hand and tried to throw up, but couldn't. She looked at Sora very briefly and closed her eyes, holding a hand up to her mouth and lying down again on her back.

"Holy shit," Sora whispered, which was a weird thing for a person whose first language wasn't English to say, because they didn't teach you in school, and how did Sora know English anyways? Riku felt weird. "Riku, this is not..."

He clicked his teeth together. "There's...I think there's a convenience store like half an hour away if we walk..."

Sora ducked underneath Kairi's arm and leaned it over his shoulders. It was scary, it was so fucking scary, Riku couldn't think in full sentences.

"Okay," he said, ducking under Kairi's other arm. She tried to walk, too, but couldn't, and they began to drag her towards the town.

* * *

It was very quiet, and mostly awkward.

After a while the crisis mode of "Kairi is seriously in trouble if we don't get her to a hospital quick" diminished. Of course, it was still there, but she was such a small person being carried by two other people, it wasn't very hard to walk.

It was basically dark outside. Crickets were there, but not much else besides whispering trees and dry leaves.

So even when the sun was completely gone, Riku didn't really say anything. And then even when Kairi passed out permanently and they really were dragging her, like they were dragging a corpse to be buried, he didn't really say anything. Even though it took an hour to get to the CVS, instead of thirty minutes, he was just sort of zoning out in his own little Riku world.

"Excuse me!" Sora shouted at the building, before they were even inside. With Kairi's tiny, dangling and unconscious body between them, they stepped on the mat in front of the automatic doors. The stench of sunscreen and bugspray was magnified by sweat, hanging between them, and Kairi looked awful. Her hair was messy and she was so pale, and sweating a little.

Luckily there was a store clerk restocking a shelf right by them.

"I - I'm sorry, can we - "

What level of politeness was needed when you were in a serious crisis? Were you allowed to just dispel common courtesy and shout at strangers, or did you have to say please and thank you still?

"P- please call an ambulance for her!"

The store clerk jumped a little, her eyes widening, "Uh- uh, okay, you just hold on right there, okay?"

They dragged Kairi over to a wall, leaning up against it and breathing hard. Riku's legs were shaking, all of a sudden, from muscle fatigue or whatever. He felt like swearing, it seemed appropriate. Or like in those doctor shows, you know? _I need a breathalyzer, stat, pronto!_

Wait. Breathalyzers were what cops used for drunk people.

Whatever, it was his imagination anyways, what did it matter if surgery intern him asked for a breathalyzer to resuscitate a person? It wasn't like he was saying it out loud. Ha!

He sighed; Kairi's head lolled to the side and landed on his shoulder.

He looked at her face, with her closed eyes, and the horrible warm dark blackness in his stomach and throat got thicker or deeper or multiplied. _Ohgodohgodohgod_.

* * *

_"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."_**  
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery**_  
__

* * *

_

So, Kairi was legally dead by the time an ambulance showed up.

They took those electric paddle things, whatever they were called, and like, zapped her back to life while they watched. And then she got wheeled into the ambulance, and one of the EMTs stayed behind and asked them if they'd also been drinking, even any little amount, and they won't get in trouble if they were, so don't worry, and are they really really _sure _they haven't been drinking anything?

And they both said the same thing, which was yes, I'm definitely sure unless someone spiked the air, and I didn't even know there was booze there. And Sora looked really nervous and asked if she was going to be all right. The EMT said that yes, probably, because they'd got her heart pumping again, and what were your names? And he wrote things down in a little notebook.

Half an hour later found them both outside the CVS at ten o'clock, leaning up against the wall and staring at an empty parking lot.

It felt, to Riku, almost poetic. He wasn't sure how. All alone in a parking lot with Sora, in another little world, while moths flickered around one sodium streetlight like a fading pyramid of orange.

Moths - hey.

It was a little bit cold, so he shivered as the wind tickled the fine hairs on his arm. The side of the building was rough and bumpy, and the parking lot was fading away, starting with the little white lines drawn on the ground for all of the cars. He blinked his eyes hard and scratched his forehead.

He stretched his legs out all the way; Sora copied him. Riku rolled his head to the side to look at Sora, who smiled at him and toed his foot.

Riku smiled back, very awkwardly because he was out of practice, and then turned his head back to look at the empty, dark parking lot.

He was starting to feel guilty, about the whole Kairi thing, because -

Okay, fuck, he'd been feeling horribly, nigglingly guilty for ages, like a big black worm in his stomach -

- well, if they hadn't done anything she would have actually literally died, and that was really really scary. He'd seen it happen to a _moth_ and he got upset. A _person_ - and a good person, too, the kind of person that went around doing stuff like erasing graffiti on walls - was so much more important than a moth that you didn't know.

But she was okay.

Was this the kind of thing you told your parents? It didn't really involve them, and Riku wasn't in danger or something. They didn't _need_ to know; him and Sora had it under control, and it was basically over. It was just, what if they heard it through the grapevine or whatever? And got mad at Riku for not saying anything.

They'd be worried about him, if they knew he was at a party with drinking. They'd start thinking he was shooting up drugs in his room or something. They'd start paying too much attention to him. It'd be all "How was school, Riku, I mean _really_ is everything okay?" and "You know you can tell me anything, right?"

He would explain to them most of it. He would explain that Kairi felt very sick, so he and Sora brought her to a hospital, and she's fine now. He didn't have to explain about the alchohol, since he hadn't had any. It would make them too worried.

_Besides_, he thought, and then didn't finish.

He looked at his sneakers with his dirty shoelaces, halfway untied. He didn't know what made him do it, but he shoved them off his feet, letting his socks touch the pavement - as gross as it was.

It was bumpy, kind of rough, and wind tickled his ankles. It felt like walking on gravel, which was what it basically was. Like when you had to run outside really quickly to pick up the newspaper or let the dog out, and didn't bother putting on shoes and ended up stepping on sticks, that was what it felt like.

"Hey," Sora said, smiling, "Good idea," and took off his own shoes.

They both turned their heads to face each other, Riku leaning on one hand and Sora flopped against the wall.

Sora was a boy and Riku was a boy, which meant they were on the same side of the line, and should not look sideways. It wasn't really what you were supposed to do, or at least what your body said. Of course, considering that, the school made it pretty freaking easy to be gay in theory. Yeah, there were the hate crimes, but they were just kids fooling around. There was an after school club called the fucking _Gay-Straight Alliance Organization_, for goodness' sake. They preached in sex ed about how it was a natural thing, and that people don't know what causes it but that it isn't a choice, and blah blah blah.

Yeah, that was fine for people _other than him_.

And Riku was starting to notice this trend, where he thought about kissing Sora when Sora's face got closer, and how it kept happening every time and it wasn't really a joke anymore for him.

He could feel warmth, kind of like a radiator, from Sora's forehead, and then he stared closer and bumped their foreheads together. His vision was blurry and it looked like Sora only had one eye, which was pretty much hilarious for some reason. He giggled and so did his friend.

_I am all of the important things._

So what, he was thinking about kissing another boy on the same side of the line, and he - well it wasn't like - he knew Sora was touchy-feely and all, but he wouldn't normally get this close, if he was just - right?

He wasn't quite sure how it happened, or who moved first, and all.

But the lips, the ones he'd been thinking about touching with his, were touching his. The world didn't explode, even though two boys were kissing each other. It was feather-light, and Sora's lips were kind of dry. Riku had never kissed anybody before.

He closed his eyes. He'd thought he'd...he didn't know. Fight it more.

(He would, later, the second and third times, he would think in rapid succession like bullets_ that's a boy that's a boy you're kissing a boy **boys are not supposed to kiss other boys** Sora is a __BOY__ stop kissing a __BOY_ but not the first time.)

But it was warm, and the wind was cold. Sora wanted to kiss him. Sora wanted to kiss him back; nobody ever wanted Riku, not for anything ever. Sora was warm and solid, so...Riku didn't really...care.

He moved closer, a little.

_Click_.

The broke apart abruptly; each holding a hand to his mouth. _Oo-oops._

Sora snorted, "Pff," and giggled kind of loudly. "Um," he said.

"Yeah," Riku said, feeling his face get hot like he'd just gone on a mile run. "Uh, did our teeth - "

"_Pfff_!"

Riku felt like laughing, really hard, too, and so he did, covering his hand with his mouth. "Shut up! It's not like I know how to - "

"I know!" Sora giggled with him. Riku tucked his feet under his butt because they were getting cold. A mosquitoe or something buzzed past his ear. "But seriously, that was - "

"I know," Riku laughed a little more, his stomach sort-of vibrating with borderline-girly laughter.

Sora was Sora and Riku was Riku, and fuck the stupid line. Gender, Riku decided, should not be such a deciding factor with who you liked.

Sora pressed his lips together, and he still smelled like vegetables, and bugspray and sunscreen which made him smell like summer, but it was fading because he'd sweated it off (like Riku had) and been cooled by the wind (like Riku).

He was leaning forward on his hands, which he must have done while kissing Riku, and now he looked out into the empty parking lot surrounded by trees.

"D'you think - " he said after a pause. "Kairi, do you think she'll really be...?"

Riku stared at him for a second, trying to figure out what he was saying. His mind, even, was breathless. "No - yeah," he finally replied. "I'm sure she'll be fine, the EMT said this happens sometimes and that he's seen worse, so...I'm not worried."

Sora sighed, and smiled quietly. "Yeah," he said. "Okay, good."

He looked up at Riku. "Wanna, um..." he paused. "Try that again?"

Riku blinked at him and swallowed. "What, you mean - "

"I mean, only if you think, I was totally - "

"Yeah, sure, I mean, yeah - "

_Touch_.

He had no idea how their lips kept meeting, especially this time since they were both talking at once. He still counted it as his first kiss, though, because he felt a little high off of anxiety and wonder and maybe happiness, that two people could want each other just the same, and be just the same way, insecure and nervous and excited.

Their teeth clicked again, but they figured out how to pull away from that, to use only lips which were soft and pliable. They did that for a while.

Riku had his first kiss not wearing any shoes.

And he could feel things with his feet.

* * *

A/N: Well geez that took eight chapters.

Tell me if that achieved what I meant it to, please. (i.e. was the kiss okay?)

Mmkay.

Also, circus story (Axel and Roxas) is coming soon (and will be called "Always Moving Sideways") so updates might be a little slower.

Thoughts?


	10. Everything Was Beautiful

* * *

**And Nothing Hurt.**

* * *

"Sometimes people do things that hurt and it's not because they mean to. They just do. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you, but you end up hurt because of it."  
**- Randy K. Milholland****

* * *

  
**

A/N:

1) Of all things, don't ask me why I picked the "Girl Next Door" movie. I've never even seen it. I think it's because it was mentioned in_ The Highest Tide_ by Jim Lynch which is, by the way, a terrible book that tries pitifully to emanate _Catcher in the Rye_ and fails. Horribly. Honest to goodness, he uses the word "phony" like three times a chapter, and Miles has _exactly the same innocence complex and lack of motivation as Holden._ Just way less subtle. And less believable.

2) Since I'm actually kind of a prick, but not enough of a prick to go adding this to the first chapter, I'm going to write down some pointers in case you're one of those people who likes to look for overall messages/themes/character developments in writing, but don't want to look for your own and want to use mine (the story works fine if you ignore them). Basically for people who enjoy honors English lit and the like. I'm just putting it up because I know I hate reading obscure novels and only letting the main theme click after I've read all the way through and having to reread the whole thing again to understand it. So:

- be on the lookout for extremes (i.e. Sora questions his sexuality all the time but it takes Riku like two weeks of flirting with another boy and then a kiss to start to consider it, but that one isn't very imporant) and their overall effectiveness/goodness.

- remember whose point of view you've got; the narration isn't omniscient (and is often biased). If an action doesn't make sense, this may be why.

- it might help to form a personal opinion of which one of them you think is mentally healthier, or what your version of "mentally healthy" is, especially considering their circumstances (no definitive answer for this one).

- luckily, since I am (as already stated) a self-absorbed prick, if you've got a theory or a question you wanna ask about I will gladly answer, since I'm forgetting a bunch of things right now. I do, you see, immensely enjoy talking about myself and by extension all the things I do which I think are so great. Hahaha, self-deprecation, I'm so humble. Promise I won't do this again; I'm already embarassed.

Reading and running is, of course, always a lovely option and often-deployed for fan fiction, since I am a-a-all for enjoying it purely for the cracky pairingness :D.

* * *

"Hey, Mom?"

_"Uh-huh?"_

"I'm gonna sleep over at Sora's again today, okay? It's just easier to go home with him, since he lives closer and it's pretty late anyways..."

_"...yeah, okay. You're not imposing, are you? Did they invite you? You've been going over there a lot...have him come to our house next time, will you? And are you sure his parents are okay with this?"_

Riku didn't know what it meant, that hearing his mother say then sent pangs through him. It was awful. He looked up at Sora apologetically, then looked away when he realized Sora couldn't hear the other end of the conversation. Sora frowned at him and tilted his head to the side, then shrugged and stopped when he realized Riku couldn't see him.

"Mom, he doesn't - " he looked at Sora again. "...Yeah. It's fine, I asked. I'll tell him." Were you supposed to tell your parents that your friend was an orphan? Was there a point where you just couldn't any more? Riku hadn't met an awful lot of orphans. He could count the number he had met on a worm's limbs.

Were you supposed to tell them you'd had your first kiss with a boy? He didn't feel any different at all. He didn't feel gay. Did you feel gay? Maybe he'd been feeling gay since he hit puberty but hadn't realized it.

He looked at Sora again, leaning up against the side of a building, waiting for Riku to finish his phone call in the dusty blue light.

Damn.

* * *

When they finally got home - got to Sora's home - it was just past midnight, and the whole goddamn place was covered in night. He hung back as Sora opened the door, and they stepped in at the same time, the same way they had that very first day, and dropped their things off. Just shoes, mostly, and Riku tossed his vest on the floor. So again, for a moment, they were just a little too close and Riku could smell that Sora-smell like vegetables and dirt.

The living room seemed bigger and darker, somehow, and what had been too-clean and too-neat and too-organized and too-empty before was different. The furniture seemed bigger, and all stuck together; pale almost-blue light shifted through a window and highlighted parts of an art-deco leather chair. It seemed like everything was making a silent noise. Waiting, maybe, or just listening. Saïx was lying on the back of an armchair in the corner, not moving, just as impassive as everything else except for the very tip of his tail, which twitched.

"Hey kitty," Sora whispered, and smiled.

He headed into the kitchen, and Riku didn't move. He watched the back of Sora's head as the kid leaned down and opened the fridge, bathing the kitchen in yellowish light. He closed it again shortly. Riku thought about kissing him again. It felt weird, because kissing was a thing you thought about a lot, and then when you actually had the opportunity to _do_ it, even though Sora was acting just like he always - did. Never mind.

Sora came back with two cheese sticks in one hand and a can of soda in the other.

"Here," he said, thrusting the cheese sticks in front of Riku's face. "Take one."

"Mm," Riku said, "I'm not really hungry..."

Sora rolled his eyes and grinned. "Yeah," he agreed, "But I don't want to be the only one eating." Riku laughed quietly.

A strip of light fell from the window and adhered to Sora's face, just around his eyes. And everything about Sora was dark and night-colored, except for the little strip of pink Sora-skin around his eyes, just like that dream.

He took a cheesestick and followed Sora up to his room.

Saïx didn't seem as scary at night, not when Sora was right there. Sora, walking in front of him, maybe-gay Sora whose parents were dead and who was still the happiest guy Riku'd ever met, and...well. He bugged Riku. He bugged Riku a fuckuva lot, because he still seemed to think he was some kind of a boy genius, was what. _Oh, yeah, _he mocked Sora in the back of his head with a sort of dumb hick voice, _What do you think the point of life is, Ri-**ku**? Why haven't you killed yourself, Ri-**ku**? Why don't you even know if you're **gay** or not, Ri**-ku**? Do you **like** me, Ri**-ku**, uh-huh-huh-huh_. Then Riku sighed because he knew Sora wasn't really like that. But he still remembered that day, right after they'd met, all those questions Sora had fired off and he'd acted so goddamn _superior_ when Riku couldn't answer him.

A question could be important to a person, but that didn't mean you had to go around asking other people.

Riku breathed in, and it didn't feel like he was breathing air; it felt like he was breathing night.

And he could've sworn to the high heavens that Sora was about to go flying on books with striped skin, or at least, maybe, floating a little. Sora was the farthest thing from a perfect person that Riku Tepes had ever seen. He had his priorities all twisted, and he didn't know how to handle himself, and he didn't know when to stop talking or that when a person has earphones in they wanna be left alone, and he talked about his brother all the time and he hardly knew anything about anything, when it came down to it, and he just guessed, and he had no concept of personal space, and God he was just _too_ freaking _friendly_. He was friends with damn near everybody he met. He must have focused on Riku 'cause Riku was so mean, like he was a challenge, or something, which was why they spent so much time together.

What a goddamn lonely person Riku Tepes was.

He didn't even really have a right to be.

* * *

Sora flipped on a light in his room, which was still mostly white. He'd printed out one of the pictures he'd taken with his computer of him and Riku together. Riku didn't look angry in it. He looked kind of surprised, since he hadn't known a picture was being taken at the time. The picture was taped to the wall next to Sora's desk. But other than that, there was just a little furniture, and the bed, and the window from which hung a funny little pipe-cleaner sculpture.

Sora flopped down onto his bed and folded his arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling like the cracks were gonna tell him stories, or something.

Riku knew it was irrational, but he sometimes felt like he was competing with Sora. At least in the sense of how many weird, almost-philosophical things can you say, and that Sora always won. Maybe because Sora always brought up his own things.

Riku stood in the doorway, unsure of himself. He ran a hand through his hair. It was just way too long and girly. It was past his shoulders, even. He stuffed the cheese stick in his pocket and squeezed it.

A thought came to Riku Tepes then.

"I haven't killed myself," he began, and looked at Sora very seriously, with eyes strong enough to stare straight through every person but Sora, "Because I want to exist. That's all." Oh God, that sounded so dumb, oh geez. Wow that sounded dumb, Sora was gonna think that was really dumb, he'd made himself look like such an _idiot_ and the world was _not_ a freaking 10-meter-tall tree today.

Sora looked back at him with eyes the color the sky oughtta be. Riku'd never seen the sky that color, not really, because it was a little less vibrant and a little more eye-colored than the sky was. Less abrasive. Not that Riku cared.

Sora sat up on his elbows, and looked at Riku with his mouth set in a relaxed line, and his eyes as empty as if Riku'd said something about schoolwork. Yep. Yep, Riku'd said something really dumb. Then Sora smiled at Riku, and his teeth caught the bluish light.

Everything looked different in moonlight, bigger, quieter, more important, like it was waiting for something, or just listening.

"Hey," Sora said, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. "I like that. I really do. _C'est une bonne raison pour la vie, mon ami_." He laughed, very softly, because Belle was just downstairs, and asleep. "I'm surprised that you remembered, though."

They were quiet again for quite a while. At some point Sora leaned over and opened up his music player and put on some song Riku'd never heard, but which sounded weird, and he came to sit down on the floor. It was a weird piano sound, the music that was playing, and it wasn't very interesting because it didn't have much in the way of a tune or anything. So he sat still for a while, until the track ended.

"Did you just think of that?" Sora said after a while.

"...yeah," Riku said, "I don't know. It sounded good in my head. It probably sounds dumb." Guh. Everything sounded dumb today.

Sora laughed, and crawled forward on the bed, which seemed like a sound that was too loud for what they were doing, and what time it was. He crawled forward so that his head was near Riku's, and he was smiling like it was the last day of school. "That's what I always think," he said, and Riku could feel Sora's hot breath on his face, uncomfortable, "But I always say it. That might make us dumb, but at least we're brave enough to _be_ dumb."

Riku stared up at him and smirked without malice. "Gee," he said, "Deep." Of course, Sora didn't say that what Riku had said _wasn't_ dumb. That was probably, Riku mused, because Sora hated lying almost as much as he hated telling the truth.

"Tch, shut up," Sora tugged on a piece of Riku's hair and Riku fake-winced. He grinned up at Sora.

"Oh!" Sora said, "No way! I got you to smile. I feel like I achieved something today." They laughed.

Riku thought something along the lines of _I think saving the life of a girl with alcohol poisoning was a little more of an achievement_, but didn't say it out loud because that would have ruined it.

Sora sat up with his legs crossed Indian-style, which Riku had always thought of as kind of a racist way of putting it, and wrapped his hands around his ankles. He stared down at Riku from way up on the bed, and Riku thought about how plain he looked, sitting on the bed, getting seen from such an unappealing angle. The shadows on his face made him look deformed. Sora saw Riku looking and smiled, then let his smile fade and looked back up at the window.

They could see city lights from here, standing tall and impassive like trees for people who were afraid of the dark. There wasn't much a person could describe a city as. They were just tall, and they honked, and they stacked people like boxes. If you were kinda dumb, you could call it a metaphor for life, but you could do that with a lot of things.

The sky wasn't as black as it should have been. The lights ruined it. It was this sort of mostly-black color tinted with puke orange. It was awful.

Sora looked back at Riku, who noticed him looking and looked back. Sora held up the thumb and forefinger of both of his hands in an L and made a little frame with his fingers, squinting one eye like he was taking a photograph and pointing the frame at Riku. "Click," he said. "Snapshots of my life."

"What?"

Sora laughed and shook his head. "Never mind." He put his hands down and looked at the city lights again. Just past them, and if you craned your neck very far to one side and squinted, you could see part of the ocean, lapping a beach that belonged to some condos. The ocean glittered like it had something to prove.

And, again, he looked down at Riku with wide eyes that seemed to stand out more than eyes usually did. He stared, was what he did, and he kind of looked like he was trying to reflect one of Riku's own angry cutting glares back at him, but without any sort of anger at all. It was weird. His eyes were so clear, and his pupils were big because it was so dark. Riku'd read all this crap in books about eyes before, but he'd never really thought about it, about how hard it was to describe a person's eyes. "Blue as an ocean" didn't really do anything for him, since the ocean changed color all the time.

He didn't even know why he was talking about eyes. Why were eyes so romantic when like, mouths weren't, and noses weren't? Nobody ever had a sexy _nose_.

He didn't say any of that. Instead, what he said was "Please don't stare at me like that."

He said it very quietly, too, like he was scared to say it. Which he was. He was scared as Hell, saying something so horrible and honest.

Sora blinked and backed up a bit. "Why?" he asked. God, that was such a _Sora_ thing to ask.

"I just..." Riku looked down, fiddling with his hands. "Just don't."

"...okay," Sora said finally. He licked his lips and blinked his eyes. He sighed. He kept his eyes half-lidded from fatigue, and Riku knew he was probably thinking about Kairi, too. Of course, he probably didn't have any of the malice that Riku had about it. He was probably thinking things like "poor Kairi, I hope she's okay." Riku was thinking that too, of course, but that awful part of his mind that wasn't afraid to say the most horrible things was thinking that she deserved it, that it was her own fault, that nobody _made_ her drink all of that booze. It was the part of his thoughts that was shameless, that didn't feel empathy, that let him think these things. That completely and impassively called 'em how it saw 'em. This tiny little voice that gave him the meanest and nastiest things to say. He never usually said them.

He hated that there was a part of him who could think such an awful thing. He hated it, too, that he didn't totally disagree with it. It _was_ Kairi's fault.

God, he hated himself sometimes. _Sora_ probably _never_ thought things like that. Speaking of Sora. Riku felt pretty awful for thinking it was more important that he'd kissed a boy than it was that a seventeen-year-old girl had almost died from alcohol abuse.

He glanced at Sora's lips again, because they were both being very quiet.

He could crawl up onto the bed and kiss Sora again. He wasn't _going_ to, obviously. But now that it had happened once, it seemed like it wouldn't have been as big of a deal if it were to happen...again. It was kind of exciting to know that if he wanted to, he could just go up there and kiss another person. Kiss _Sora_. It kind of felt like some huge awesome secret, especially since he could share it with another person. Not that he _would_ go up there, or anything.

He didn't. Sora was the one who slid down the bed to sit next to Riku. Next to, but not touching. They both leaned on the foot of the bed, comfortable in the heavy layer of black silence. Sora smiled at Riku.

Everything looked different in moonlight; bigger, quieter, more important, like it was waiting for something, or just listening.

There were six inches of space between them and they were killing Riku.

Sora broke it, though. He leaned sideways and put his head on Riku's shoulder, with his arms around his knees. His hair tickled Riku's neck.

"You still want me not to look at you?" he asked.

"Ah," Riku said, "N- no, it's fine." That's not what he'd _said_. He'd said "Please don't look at me like that." Don't look at me like you're trying to see something inside of me that you have that I don't, because as much as you want to you can't understand another person, not ever, not _really_. He didn't say that, though, because it would have taken too long and he didn't want to. He hadn't said not to look at him _period_.

Sora didn't say anything else for a little while, just let his head rest on Riku's shoulder and blinked slowly every once in a while. Something about the lateness of the night, with the quietness of the room and the closeness of the two boys, it wasn't the time for long conversations. Any attempts at them were snuffed humanely. But what there was room for was little things.

"Hey," Riku muttered. "Sora?"

"Yeah?"

He didn't know why he said it; it was sorta stupid. He felt like he was playing at being Sora. "...do you still fly to school?" he laughed quietly, and Sora laughed with him.

"Yup," Sora said, "Every goddamn day, Riku Tepes. I fly to school every goddamn day."

_Every goddamn day_, he said. Riku smiled to himself, staring out the window he could barely see. What strange vernacular for a francophone. Where on Earth did Sora learn English so well? It was one of those questions that bugged Riku, but not long enough for him to remember when he was talking to Sora and just trying to keep up. Sora Goodwin had his tiptoes on the ground and he always bounced like the wind was tickling his bare feet.

"Doofus," Sora said, rolling his eyes, sitting up and smiling fondly. He lifted Riku's arm up by the wrist and ducked under it, resting his head on Riku's shoulder again and letting Riku's arm flop down on his shoulders.

_Oh_, Riku thought, _Okay._ Did that mean dating or was it just "I have a crush on you"? He wondered, sitting there with his arm accidentally around another boy at one in the morning on a Friday night, if he even really cared any more. All his little protests and questions seemed kind of half hearted.

It was _"Can I really see myself kissing him again?"_

To which the answer was always, _Yeah, sure, what's the big deal?_

And then it was _"Does this mean I'm gay?"_

Followed by a vague answer like, _I dunno, does liking one boy make you gay?_

Ugh. Fuck his subconscious. Sora was kind of comfortable.

"How _do_ you speak English so well, anyways?" Riku muttered sleepily. He hadn't forgotten, quite.

"Mom was a translator," Sora said easily. Riku started a little on the inside. It was completely unrelated to Sora's reply. It was more like he'd just realized what was going on in that slow, unrelentingly teenaged way of his.

_umumumum you kissed a **boy** Riku you're not supposed to _**_do_**_ that Sora's got a **dick** and **so do you** ewewewewew  
_

Which was a pretty embarrassing thought, but Riku's mind had a dirty mouth, and he couldn't control his thoughts. God, that sentence sounded seriously wrong.

His heart was beating a little faster now, maybe. He could smell Sora's shampoo and feel Sora's hair tickle his neck.

"She was?" he prompted, even though he didn't know why. He didn't really care.

Ugh. Damn.

"Uh-huh," Sora said. "She translated stuff from English to French, mostly, but sometimes the other way around. Mostly just copyright stuff or boring legislation or something, but every once in a while she'd do a comic or a novel or something, and she'd let me help out and teach me and stuff. So I learned all these slang words. Like 'doofus'." He laughed. "She taught Roxas, too, but he didn't seem to like it as much."

Riku felt it, when Sora stopped smiling. He started to chew on the inside of his cheek.

"...I worry about him all the time," Sora said quietly. "He wasn't very good at English at all, and now he's somewhere where he has to speak it all the time. I mean, he doesn't say it outright, but I think he's really unhappy. All his emails," he paused here. "- we send email every day -" and continued. "All his emails have been kind of short lately, like he doesn't even want to bother replying to me. And it's not like I can just fly up there and ask him, so..."

Riku didn't say anything besides "Yeah," because he had no idea what a person was supposed to say. He knew that in books and stuff people would just totally change the subject and go rambling off about random crap so that the distraction made the other person feel better.

That was crap.

At least when Sora was involved.

Riku remembered every time Sora had told him something important, like that day,

_(March fourteenth, _a voice whispered, _don't act like you don't remember_)

the day that Sora had broken down in the bathroom and told him how awful he felt about how long his parents had been dead, how he didn't even know if he was gay, how when Sora started talking about something which sucked he kept going until he was all finished and couldn't think of anything else to say about it so he'd _never ever never_ have to talk about it again.

"And," Sora continued, true to Riku's thoughts, "Every time I think I'm...happy about something, or I get excited for something that's happening, I think about him and how at any given moment he's probably way more unhappy and then I feel guilty for _feeling_ so...happy." He looked at Riku, right into Riku Tepes's green-ass goddamn eyes that should've stared straight through a person, and all Riku could think about was the cold air that hit hit now-bare shoulder. Sora shook his head and laid it back down on Riku, who was glad of it. He hadn't moved his arm.

"It's good that you worry," Riku said. He didn't know what the Hell he was saying. "I mean, lots of people hate their siblings."

Sora looked like he wanted to say something, but didn't. Riku kept going.

"I mean, I mean I know it's different since you feel like you should be totally...supportive, since you've both been through...stuff, but that doesn't take away sibling rivalry or anything," Sora relaxed. "And most people..." he winced, "Lots of people are so self-centered they don't even bother to think about other people..." he trailed off.

"How did you deal with it?" Riku asked quietly.

He felt Sora physically startle on his shoulder. "Deal with what?"

"When your parents died," Riku said, almost whispering. He was so curious. He didn't know anyone who'd lost someone, really _lost_ someone, other than Sora.

Sora was silent again for a while, a thoughtful sort of quiet, which Riku thought was reasonable. A person couldn't answer that question right away, not honestly.

"I cried a lot, at first," Sora said. He sounded the littlest bit choked. Oh God, Riku hadn't made him _cry_, had he? Sora felt like he wanted to keep going, to Riku.

"I mean, the whole stages of loss, those did happen. M- mostly. At first I thought that people were lying to me. Like, I don't know...it was this whole, whole elaborate joke my parents were playing, because _forever_ is such an awful, awful thing. I mean, I still try not to think about it. To - about not ever seeing them again, ever. Not when I graduate high school or college, or when I - I don't know, buy a, a house or..." he sniffled, and it was the most pitiful thing Riku Tepes had ever heard.

"Like, no exceptions. Forever."

_Forever_, Riku's mind said again. He thought about never seeing his mom again, ever. About waiting for her to come home and realizing it would never happen again.

Riku knew he didn't fully get it, what Sora was saying; to him it seemed...sad, sure, but barely sadder than a realistic death in a movie or a TV show. He knew that Sora probably hated people like him. If he was Sora he'd hate that Riku guy who didn't know anything about anything. But Sora didn't really know anything about anything, either.

"I never did the bargaining thing. I - definitely got angry. I mean, you can't watch TV or listen to music or anything when something like that happens. I got mad at sitcoms for daring to make jokes! I thought 'How can you laugh when people are _dying_, all the time?'" He laughed. "I was mad at anything that seemed a little happy, and anybody on TV that was sad or mourning felt like they were just making fun of me. Like, you don't get it, it's not a dramatic _twist_ it's a person's _life_, God..."

He coughed a little bit and wiped the corner of his eye with his palm. "Then I cried a lot more," he said, "When I started to really think about them being gone."

Riku thought about the little dead moth he'd crushed with his chair in a hospital of all places. _Yeah_, he thought, _it's a big difference when you've seen it alive first_. That little dead body, crushed, its wing smeared across the tiles of the floor like tracked-in mud. It was probably the tiniest carcass Riku had ever seen. He thought about it all the time.

"Yeah?" Riku said, rubbing Sora's arm with his thumb in a seriously half-assed attempt to help.

"And...I don't know. I...didn't get _used_ to it, I guess. And it's not...getting _numb_, either, I don't think. I don't want to say 'acceptance,' cause it's not like I'm happy about it, I just..." he shrugged. "I'm okay with it, now, I guess. I - geez," he muttered. "This is sounding really whiny."

"No," Riku said right away. "I wanted to hear that."

"Why?" Sora grumbled, and shuddered.

"I..." he didn't want to say it was because he didn't know what actual pain felt like, or that he was just curious. "I guess I just wanted to understand," he settled on, and it wasn't a lie. Sora the stupid little sky-blue engine that had to. God. And Riku had thought he had a tough time of it. _Je_sus.

Riku noticed in a sort of detached way that one of his hairs had apparently snapped off when he took his ponytail out and was now twined around the hair elastic on his wrist. It was actually kind of gross. He shivered when a gust of wind blew in from the cracked-open window.

"Oh," Sora said, and pushed his head further into Riku's neck. "...thanks," he whispered.

"Yeah," Riku said. He put his chin on top of Sora's head because he could. He knew it was cheesy, what he was thinking, but he couldn't help it. He thought it anyways. He couldn't control his thoughts.

_Jeez, you're fucking beautiful._

And, since it was the kind of night that stifled any long-term conversations, even ones about things like dead parents or alive and very faraway brothers, they stopped talking again. Riku couldn't shake the feeling that they were...cuddling, or something. On some level, some really small part of him was really, really excited. _Holy crap somebody is leaning on me and he's got his head on my shoulder like he really **needs** me or something or like he just plain **likes** me and that's just so freakin' flattering, I guess - Jesus, Sora, you're fucking amazing sometimes. I hate it when you cry. Stop crying.  
_

It was probably the first wholeheartedly honest thing he'd thought that night. Suddenly hyper-aware of Sora's closeness, he shifted a bit, tried to bring his arm into a better position. Better how, he didn't know.

"...you should know by now," Sora said suddenly, when Riku shifted, "...that I'm a very touchy-feely person." He must have thought Riku's movements were because he was uncomfortable. Which he sort of was. But everything seemed muted at night. It wasn't as big of a deal, if you were leaning on each other at night.

"I've gathered." They'd moved on from that rather quickly.

"So, this is gonna be a regular thing."

"What, the dead parents?"

"No, the..." he wiggled under Riku's arm. "This."

"Oh," Riku said. He was surprisingly okay with that. He tilted his head back to rest it on the bed, letting his arm hang naturally on Sora's shoulders. Wha-at ever, at this point. Honestly. They'd already kissed, this was practically nothing.

Riku started to think about that kiss. (Sora seemed perfectly happy to let him.) As far as kisses went, it...was one. He was pretty sure it qualified, since lips touched on purpose.

He didn't really have anything to compare it to. And if he was being honest with himself, he had no idea whether or not it was even a good kiss, or if it had felt nice. At the time, he'd been kind of mind-drunk, or at least mind-buzzed, on Sora and sodium parking lot lights and moths and excitement. He barely even remembered the actual moment of it happening. But he knew it had happened. If he thought really hard, he could imagine those lips on his again, but he could have just been making it up. The way if you've lost something, and you try to remember what happened when you were walking home, you technically _can_ but you've done it so many times you can imagine it with just as much accuracy. He hadn't thought much about kissing before. He didn't know what it felt like to imagine a kiss, more than the actual action of leaning in, which he'd considered at least once around Sora.

His breathing felt really loud, all of a sudden. Sora's seemed to fit. It was quiet and even, through his nose. Riku's was like a paper bag being shredded with forks, to his ears.

He felt like one of them should say something. It had generally only been a few minutes between silences, if that. But neither of them did.

After a while they sort-of-hugged, very awkwardly, and despite Sora's protests of "the guest should be the comfortable one!" Riku slept on the floor and he slept on the bed.

* * *

Riku partly woke up at two in the morning to hear Sora talking on the phone to somebody.

"_Écoutes, Rox_," he was saying. "_Je ne sais pas quelle heure il est en l'Angleterre, mais içi c'est..._" he paused. "_Il est deux heures du matin!? Oi - oi, Rox, en Anglais....Oui, vraiment. Tu as besoin de le pratique._ Okay? English, really, you gotta practice. Next time. Uh-huh. What? Oh, yeah.

"No, no I haven't yet," he whispered suddenly, perhaps realizing that he was being overly loud. "I only got home a couple of hours ago. Long story. I mean, really long story, like you wouldn't believe. W-" he snorted. "No, Rox, I don't _know_ if it's as cool as what happened to you since I can't check my email right now!"

There was a slightly longer pause as Roxas spoke on the other line.

"Oh, because Riku's in front of my laptop. Mm. Yeah, he's sleeping on the floor...what?" He paused for a second then started to laugh, out loud at first and then stifled. "...n- no, it's not what you said. I mean, it is, but seriously, y- you, haha, don't know how funny it is that you'd say that today." There was a rustle of the comforter. "I'll tell you later. Mm."

He laughed again. "I will, okay, Rox? I'll check my email! Yeah, I think it allows picture attachments. I said _allows_. Uh-huh. It's like...to let you...do something. Yup. No, no yup is just another way to say yes. Riku?" He quieted down even more. "What about him? No, he's in my grade. I don't know. Taller than I am, and he's got white hair. No, that's normal for the island. I've seen other people that have it. It's about as common as red hair here. Ah, no, he's nice. Well I mean, he's...nice to me."

There was silence, then a frustrated huff. "_No _he's not a _bully_, moron!" He laughed. The whole time, Riku about had a view of the foot of the bed. "He's not social, that's all. I know. He says he doesn't like people...no, yeah, that's kind of annoying but he's not - it doesn't bother - Rox, hang on a second, would you? Yes, I _am_. This is a really weird conversation to be having with your brother. I just told you! G-A-Y, Roxas. No, I thought I said that; he's the sweetest guy I've ever - what? I don't know, you can't ask me that, rooster face! For all I know he was placating - yeah, I wouldn't put it past him. I told you, he's sweeter than he thinks he is. Listen, I'll go look at the pictures as soon as I wake up after I go back to sleep, 'kay? Promise? I don't want to wake Riks up. What? Yeah, I call him that. _D'accord. Je t'aimes. _Bye."

_Click_, said the phone.

Riku didn't fall asleep for another hour. His last thought was _God dammit, Sora Goodwin, I can't believe you thought I was placating you._

* * *

He woke up about an hour later, fully, and it was at this point that Riku Tepes realized it was going to be one of _those_ nights. He could fall asleep as many times as he liked, but he was going to keep waking up no matter what. He didn't know why. It felt like he was the most tired person in the world. He sighed and rolled over onto his back. There would be no "and Riku woke up the next morning feeling refreshed". There would be no separation between falling asleep and waking up. It was going to be a long, drawn-out, groggy six or seven hours in which he never really woke up or fell asleep. He wasn't unused to them. Sunday nights he went to bed at least two hours earlier than he had Saturday, and hadn't been awake nearly long enough to fall asleep.

Still. It was _Friday_. Technically Saturday morning at this point. It didn't matter if he didn't get much sleep; he could sleep later.

He yawned; the cloth of the sleeping bag he usually used rustled in the way only waterproof fabric can. He tried his quiet best to wiggle out of it, and stood up, checking to make sure Sora was still asleep. He was, all curled in around himself with his cast-hand flung out to the side. Riku kept forgetting it was there.

Speaking of which...he pulled the cheese stick out of his pocket. It was kind of gross and warm now. He put it next to Sora's on the desk, in front of the room-temperature, unopened soda. Next to the laptop.

Okay, maybe there was like, a check list online somewhere to find out if you were gay. Like a quiz or something. "If you got mostly 1's, you're just an average bicurious teenager! If you got mostly 2's, you're a flaming queer!" Yup. Probably.

He was kind of scared to look it up, though, because he knew if he did he was likely to come up not only with gay porn sites but, on the other end of the extreme, a ton of homophobic bull. There was a lot of hateful shit online.

Maybe he could figure it out on his own. What were the requirements for it? You had to...like guys. Or at least, you had to like them more than you liked girls. So he could...look up...girl porn. Yes? And if he didn't find naked women, of all things, attractive, then he supposed there was no hope for him. Unless he was asexual. Riku thought about being asexual, and not ever having sex because he never wanted to. He found he was unsurprisingly fine with the whole idea. It seemed to him, however, a tad idealistic. But it would have made his life much simpler.

Okay. So. He flipped Sora's laptop open with a quiet plastic click sound and waited for the screen to load. _Please choose your username, _the screen said, which was kind of dumb since there was only one icon there anyways. Sora had chosen one of the stock images of a pitiful-looking boxer dog with its head on its paws. Riku would have to ask him about that.

He clicked the icon and let Sora's desktop load. It mostly had school projects in the form of documents and power point presentations, and his background was seriously just like a painting of a floating castle. There were a couple of curiously-labeled documents, and a few jpegs that his brother had obviously sent him, as well as some gaming icons. All in all it was entirely too normal. Riku suspected that Sora kept all of the interesting things in the folder inconscpicuously labeled "misc".

He opened up a web browser, hovering the mouse above the search bar. What exactly were the search terms when you were looking for porn? Just typing in "pornography" seemed a little weird. Riku searched the sparse and relatively useless part of his mind that had to do with sex, just in case he could think of anything. Riku kept thinking that he was probably asexual. Teenage boys were _perverts_, and he was _seventeen_. Even guys that were barely interested in girls at all were perverts when they were seventeen. He looked back at Sora, sprawled out on his bed with his cheek squished against the pillow and his hair sticking up the way brown hay would if it was uneven enough to make points. He kind of looked like a drunk baby.

Riku sighed and turned back to the computer, taking an admittedly embarassing amount of time to come up with the words "girl next door," which he vaguely remembered being a sleezy American movie that came out when he was fourteen. He'd never seen it, but he remembered the ads, and for the most part they'd consisted of a not-very-dressed blonde woman and a couple of frat boys or something. He typed the name into the search bar and turned off safe search.

Now, it took him about a minute to realize that the results he'd gotten were not nude photography for the sake of art. That was embarrassing in itself. But once he did, he enlarged one of the images of a naked woman who looked like she was having the time of her life showing her breasts to the camera.

Riku stared at it briefly, felt his face grow hot and flush from embarrassment, and he turned away. There was something horribly wrong about an actual human being showing their naked body parts to a bunch of strangers. It was like drunk driving accidents. You heard about it happening all the time, and people joked about it, and it wasn't like you didnt' think it existed you just didn't think it existed _for you_. You think to yourself "boy it's weird that people look at naked pictures of other people online" but you somehow have it in your mind that if you searched it up, somehow you'd never actually see any.

But. The matter at hand.

Was it attractive? _God_ no. It was just embarrassing and kind of awkward, and Riku sort of pitied the woman in the picture. He minimized the window and turned around in the chair to look at Sora. His eyes took a few seconds to adjust from the brightness of the screen to the darkness of the room, and eventually the shape of his friend halfway huddled in the blankets with his cheek still squished awkwardly against his face by the pillow and the blue light of the nighttime making him look about as magical as a football.

Riku was not embarassed to look at Sora. He knew that sounded cheesy, but it wasn't a very hard conclusion to come to. Riku thought about the naked picture. He didn't ever want to kiss that lady; she was a stranger, and she seemed kind of sad just for being what she was. Sora was just right there and he didn't lie. Riku thought about kissing Sora, and his brain said _Yeah, okay_.

"Mmf," Sora said, and Riku felt his heart speed up when Sora slowly sat up and rubbed at his eyes. "Why are you on the computer? It's so bright."

It occurred to Riku, only just now, that Sora had restrained himself from going on the computer because it would have woken Riku up, but that Riku had had no such consideration for Sora. Oops. Whatever. Some defensive part of his brain kicked in. What did he care anyways? Sora would get back to sleep eventually.

_No,_ said another part. _Quit thinking like that; it's what got you into this mess in the first place._

"Ah," Riku made a noise. "I was, um, trying to figure something out." He spun around in the chair and killed the window he had up with a click. He shut the laptop.

"What?" Sora asked him innocently. Riku started smiling at him. Not because he was happy or anything, but more for lack of anything else to do with his face.

"Well," Riku said, "I was trying to figure out if I was gay."

Sora stared at him for a second. His eyebrows shot up. He opened his mouth in a sort of half-faked laughing surprise, bit his lower lip to try and keep from grinning and chucked a pillow at Riku's head.

"Hey!" Riku grumbled, catching it and settling it on his lap. "What was that for!"

"You kissed me and you didn't even know if you wanted to, doofus!"

Riku laughed then, because he was tired and in a funny mood, and came to sit on the bed and return Sora's pillow. Sora took it and put it back behind his head, then turned to Riku with patient eyes. It was funny. Used to be that Riku was always the one who waited for people to talk, all the time, and he always waited the whole time until he knew you'd said everything you wanted to say before he'd shoot you down with some little angry quip.

Sora Goodwin looked at him with patient eyes and bare feet, like he already knew everything about everything and was waiting for Riku to catch up with him, starting now. He smelled like a garden.

"So?" he said quietly. "Are you?"

Riku didn't know what made him say it. Maybe it was that everything seemed bigger and quieter at night, more muted, like it didn't count if you said it now. Maybe it was because he kept thinking about that stupid dead moth, all the time, and how lately it seemed like Sora loved to talk about all of the things he'd be when he was old and wrinkly and useless, since his goal in life was that. Maybe Riku just once didn't want to disappoint someone.

"Yeah," he said, "Think so."

Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait_wait_. That wasn't right. Nonono, he hadn't come to that conclusion, he hadn't tried a fair field, he was probably asexual! Just because he didn't like girl porn didn't mean he liked guy porn. Maybe he just had a type! He hadn't come to any conclusions, he wasn't even sure what he was looking for! Nonononononono_no_.

He hated that there were no takebacks in real life.

"Good," Sora said simply, with no further explanation.

_Good?_ What the _fu_- he should have learned to expect this from Sora by now.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, and Riku got the feeling that one of them was supposed to kiss the other one, but he certainly didn't have the guts to. He felt the muscles in his abdomen tighten uncomfortably. It was like he was hungry without actually wanting to eat food.

Sora took a big breath and looked down and to the side absently.

The moment passed, and Riku felt his clenched stomach relax.

Sora slid his legs off the side of the bed to sit right next to Riku, staring at the floor. He looked up at Riku again and Riku got that funny stomach feeling. It was horrible. He wished it would stop. He knew it was nerves, he wasn't stupid, but that didn't mean he had to like it. Whatever idiot had described it as butterflies had clearly confused butterflies with cotton balls. Sora and his stupid eyes!

Sora leaned in and hugged Riku, all of a sudden. Riku stiffened completely. Oh no. Get off. Get off _now_.

"Hey," he said in this sort of awful, heart-breaking little voice. "Riku Tepes."

"Yeah?" he said through clenched teeth. Get off _now_! His hands were fists.

"I'm glad you aren't dead," Sora whispered, and squeezed his eyes shut. Riku's body was still horribly tense, and he found himself unable to relax, since - well, Hell, he was being _hugged_, that wasn't - ! He kept his jaw tight.

Sora either didn't notice or didn't care. "...I know," he said very quietly, "That's a really lame thing to say." Riku felt his heart slow down, but he didn't relax his body. "But...I don't know. You don't know how much you want to say that to most people until you can't say it to them. I just..." he sighed, "I hope you get all old and wrinkly, too. Just give me a sec."

Riku did. His muscles started to shake from having been tensed up for so long. Just when he thought he was about to break, or burst, or explode or _something _- Sora let go. Riku inhaled deeply.

"Sorry," Sora said, climbing back into his bed. He sounded incredibly meek.

"It's okay," Riku lied.

Riku could only technically speak for himself, but he was pretty sure neither of them fell asleep again that night.

_

* * *

_

A/N: I know, I'm an ass. You thought I was done with emotionally unsteady reactions?

You could probably figure out the contents of the email, anyways. That was in here, but I'm putting it in the next chapter since it's kind of too light for here. Actually, I hope I find a place for it. This one ended pretty sad.

* * *


	11. So What if You Catch Me

* * *

**Where Would We Land?**

**

* * *

**

A/N: I...should stop reading fanfiction when I'm trying to write it. You people are giving me an inferiority complex. Friggin'...jeez.

Orders of business:

1) oh man I had to go watch some cutscenes from the end of the second game for help with characterization and _ughhh_ now I'm really depressed _why are these games so depressing_

2) Yeah, I know the beginning of this chapter is boring and pointless, but I'm not getting rid of it. It's this or being jumpy and random as hell. Just hang on, (I think) it gets more interesting, at the end anyways.

3) So it's summer now. That means I have an inordinate amount of free time, and I'd rather not spend _all_ of it watching TV and reading Axis Powers Hetalia. If you're ever bored and want to talk, honestly, drop me a line. It'll take me a little while to reply, since I'm slowly coming out of my lurker phase, but I'll reply. :/

* * *

"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."**  
- Harold Wilson**_ (1916 - 1995)_

* * *

Riku Tepes was the loneliest person in the goddamn world.

He didn't even really have a right to be.

He didn't know whether or not he was mad at Sora, and he didn't know if he should be the one feeling sorry. For all he knew, Sora had no idea the emotional _crap_ Riku was putting himself through that night. Sora with his little _"Sorry,"_ his little "feel bad for me" complaints that stabbed Riku in the gut and twisted around in there so much that he couldn't sleep because he didn't know if he was angry or if he was sorry or if he even _cared_! Or if he was even _supposed_ to care. He felt like his head was going to explode.

He'd never had to worry about things like this; he'd never had to worry about friends and whether or not they were mad at you or if you were supposed to apologize for a thing. He didn't know what was allowed to be "blown over". He didn't know a lot about friendship, at all. He just knew that he couldn't get to sleep because he felt awful. That was a saying, wasn't it? Never go to bed angry?

Maybe it was because there was still an hour or two of nighttime left, because he was so tired it stung to close his eyes, but at that moment in time Riku Tepes wanted nothing more than to crawl onto the bed and shake Sora awake and whisper "I'm sorry please don't be mad" in a way that would have been so _dreadfully_ unlike him that it almost hurt to think it. It wasn't a matter of pride or anything. He just couldn't see himself acting that _girly_.

It was hot outside, and hotter inside, especially in the sleeping bag. The cloth lining was sticking to his legs, and his hair was sticking to his face. He felt like a caterpillar, all rolled up in a cocoon, tight and warm like he was being baked. Baked caterpillar. Did they always come out as pretty moths? Surely some must get stuck and die in their little cocoons.

Riku thought about that, about how creepy it would be to be a dead caterpillar stuck inside a cocoon. He groaned and kicked until the zipper on one side of the sleeping bag came partially undone, exposing one leg to the cool air. Hn. Well, he wasn't a stuck caterpillar now. He wasn't really thinking about it like that, but it felt nice.

_"Sorry."_

Sorry for _what_, Sora? _Je_sus.

Riku was learning a helluva lot about the way he dealt with people, and he had figured out that one thing he _hated _was to be confused about what the Hell was going on. He had that same stomach-clenched muscle feeling as he did when he felt like something was about to happen. It was like constantly feeling like you were about to sneeze.

"Ah," he said, rubbing at his eyes and standing up with a few loud rustles. He kind of hoped he would end up accidentally waking Sora up. He was drunk on mind-fog again, and guilt, maybe this time, and confusion. He stumbled over to Sora's bed, barely avoiding knocking into the corner of his desk.

Sora was a tiny lump, rolled up into a little ball with one arm flung out to the side, looking limp and bony. He looked like a bunch of sticks tied together with string.

Riku knew it was irrational, but seeing Sora lie there with his little baby face sleeping like he had no worries pissed Riku off. The idea that he couldn't get something out of his mind and Sora didn't even _realize_ - pissed him off. Sora just went on sleeping like everything was fucking _peachy_. It occurred to Riku that maybe he was making something out of nothing. He didn't know how to deal with _any_ of this. But it was late at night, and he...anyways.

"Sora," he whispered quietly, hands fisted at his sides. "Sora."

Sora didn't wake up, but he grumbled something and then _smiled_ in his sleep. He took a deep breath and yawned. "I..." he whispered hoarsely. "I looked...everywhere for...you..."

Riku's jaw stiffened and he rolled his eyes upward in desperation. Someone should write a fucking kids' book. _Sora Goodwin and the Stupid Hero Complex._ Honestly. _Hon_estly. Another one of _those_ dreams.

"Sora," he hissed, hoping that this would be enough. "Wake _up_."

"Everywhere..._restons...dans le..._"

Riku took a step back and contemplated going back to his own bed. His own nice little cocoon sleeping bag, where he could sleep and keep ignoring Sora's little whimpers like he had all the other nights.

_"Sorry..."_

No, he wouldn't get to sleep, anyways.

"_Sora_!" he whispered harshly, poking his friend in the arm. "Seriously." Sora seemed warm and comfortable, and Riku felt bad for waking him up. But he was a selfish guy, and he needed to know it was okay for him to go to sleep now. It was so hard to wake Sora up, once he started to have a nightmare. He seemed stuck.

It was the hazy grey-blue-orange light of very early morning, and Sora opened his eyes lazily and only halfway. He groaned and brought his hand up to his face to rub at it, remembered the bandage, and abandoned the idea.

"_Dit, Riku..._" he said. He said Riku's name with this sort of thick French accent, and the _R_ sounded like throat fleghm. Only it was also kind of attractive, maybe just because it was foreign. Riku didn't know what to make of it. Sora turned his slivers of eyes to Riku's face. "_Je viens d'avoir un rêve de toi..._"

"What?" Riku asked, because he'd basically forgotten everything he'd learned after his French final.

Sora sat up, and the blankets he'd wrapped himself up in fell down to around his waist. He was wearing a black t-shirt with some bleach stains and his hair looked even messier than usual.

"_Quelle heure est-il?_" He glanced at the digital clock next to his bed. "_Sept heures du matin!?_" He made a sleepy face at Riku and stuck his tongue out, whacking Riku on the arm softly. "_Pourquoi est-ce que tu m'as réveillé_ _à sept heures?_"He didn't look angry about it, though, he just looked sleepy and happy. Riku laughed awkwardly.

"Uh, Sora..." Riku was sure that if Sora had spoken a bit slower or more clearly, he might have understood him, but his words were fast and blurred together like a native speaker's would be. So Riku barely heard anything other than "morning". "What?"

Sora blinked his eyes and stared at Riku harder. "What? What is it?"

"What did you say?"

Sora frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

Riku rolled his eyes and sat down on the bed. It was soft, but the sheets were a little crisp from recent washing. Some awkward ocean breeze drifted in through a fan situated in a window.

"Just now, what'd you say?"

Sora stared at him blankly for a second, then snorted and put a hand over his mouth. "Holy crap, was I just speaking French?"

"Yeah..."

Sora laughed so hard he had to squeeze his eyes shut. "What? Oh man, man I haven't done that since I was like..._twelve_. Maybe fourteen. That's actually pretty funny. My dream was in French, so maybe that's why."

"R- right," Riku said, digging his hands into the fabric of the sheets. He started to rub the cloth between his fingers systematically, for lack of anything else to do with his hands. Scritch scritch scritch. There were some cat hairs on the bed.

Maybe he didn't have to say anything. Sora had clearly forgotten. He was freaking himself out, he wasn't...honestly.

It had just been so awful. Everything had seemed right, except for the accidentally outing himself when he didn't even think he was gay, and then stupid touchy-feely Sora had _hugged_ him and he'd gone rigid and Sora hadn't stopped and everything went _wrong_ the whole world was _wrong_ Kairi was _wrong_ and something had _snapped_ and - . Riku knew it was silly. He just needed to reassure himself that they hadn't clicked out of place.

"Hey," Sora said, lying back down, "So what is it?" He yawned.

"Ah," Riku said, pinching his lips together. Scritch scritch scritch, there were cat hairs on the bed and a moth on the wall. "I just..." he trailed off and looked at Sora.

Sora was half asleep again. Sora had eyes that weren't the color of the sky, but that should have been, Sora wasn't wearing shoes, Sora looked like the kind of kid who went on adventures.

"Y'okay, buddy?" Sora muttered, closing his eyes.

"Yeah," Riku replied, scooching a little forward so he could be closer to Sora. It was really annoying. Riku was trying really hard here and Sora was basically asleep and didn't seem to give much of a shit at all. Kind of funny role-reversal. "I just...I dunno."

"Bad dream?" Sora asked him, smiling and reaching out with his good hand. He patted around a little until he found Riku's wrist, which he rubbed soothingly. Almost maternally. Gross. "I have those nights."

"No," Riku said. "I just...sorry, I guess." His voice seemed too loud for the conversation. He felt like he should be whispering again. Something quiet enough to slip underneath the oppressive quiet of almost-asleep Sora.

"Sorry for what?" Sora asked him, opening his eyes and regarding Riku honestly.

"I don't know, just earlier, with the...you're gonna think this is weird," he defended himself prematurely. Sora laughed briefly and raised his eyebrows expectantly, and it helped that he was looking Riku right in the face instead of closing his eyes and not getting it at all. "I mean, you probably aren't thinking about it at all," Riku sighed, "It's just, I'm sorry that I kind of freaked out on you when you tried to hug me." What did he mean "tried"? Sora _had_ hugged him. But he'd already said it, and it wasn't worth correcting. He was focusing on that too much.

Scritch scritch scritch, there were cat hairs on the bed and a moth on the wall.

Riku chewed on the inside of his cheek briefly and brought his legs up to sit pretzel-style. "I mean, it's not a big deal or anything, I was just sort of feeling guilty that you, um...I don't know." He grunted and set his cheek in his palm, glancing at Sora, who was still staring at him with big stupid honest eyes and waiting for him to finish and not saying anything.

"That's it," Riku said, to make it clear. Sora sat up, so close their noses were almost brushing, and grinned at him. Because, of course, he had no idea that Riku had been up wondering if Sora hated him or if he hated Sora or if he even really cared. Because Sora was so fucking _clueless_ it almost hurt.

"Okay," Sora said, smiling so sincerely it was - . His eyes darted around Riku's face like they were taking in something. "I'm glad. I was kind of worried you'd be mad." Oh, that's great, Sora. _Kind of_ worried. The kind of worried you'd be if you'd taken a quiz and had to _guess_ at a couple of answers worried. Forget-about-it-as-soon-as-you-sleep worried. Great to see the mutual feeling, _Sora_.

Riku snorted and rolled his eyes, playing with the fabric of the bed's comforter between his fingers.

"What?" Sora's eyebrows met and his mouth turned into an angry line. "What's funny?"

"You slept pretty well, for a guy who was so worried," Riku muttered, staring at a discarded t-shirt on the floor.

Riku didn't know what made him say that. He wasn't _that_ mad about it. It was just that he didn't like how easily Sora could claim to be "worried" about a thing, or rather that he was "worried _too_" when Riku wasn't really _worried_ so much as...scared, or angry, or confused. When Sora didn't actually seem to understand a thing Riku was saying. It was condescending, almost, and made Riku kind of pissed off because it was like saying "I know, I know," to a person who'd lost his parents in a fire when you had two parents and three brothers and you'd never even had to _move_ or _any_thing. Like Sora only ever paid attention when it was him who had the problem, maybe.

Riku knew that wasn't true. He wished he could take back what he'd just said to Sora.

And then Sora Goodwin broke Riku Tepes's heart.

"Of course I slept," he said, eyes tightening.

"How do you think I ever sleep?"

Sora sounded so quiet and pitiful. He fisted his hands under the blankets and glared at nothing in particular.

Riku didn't say anything, though; he didn't know what to say.

"If - ...i-if I had trouble getting to sleep every night I was sad or worried, I-I'd never sleep at all," Sora muttered. And oh _God_, he sounded like such a little kid when he said that. What was next? _"Pain, pain, go away, come again another day!"_ Riku looked at Sora looked at Riku and it broke his heart was what happened.

Riku felt like kind of an asshole now.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"...no," Sora said. "You couldn't have known." He smiled at Riku and leaned forward, putting his head on Riku's shoulder. _Bump_. "It's...not really something you can get unless you..."

"Unless you get it," Riku finished with a dry smile, looking down at the top of Sora's head.

"Yeah," Sora agreed. He sighed quietly, but not sadly. "Hey Riku?"

"Mm."

"...never mind."

Riku shook his head and rolled his eyes and smiled, leaning back so that he was lying on the bed, too, perpendicular to Sora. Sora grinned at him.

Sora leaned over him. Sora put his hands on the bed on either side of Riku's head. Sora bent down so their noses touched.

"Hey Riku?" he said.

"...M-mm," Riku cleared his throat in the affirmative. He had no idea what the Hell Sora thought he was doing. It wasn't a sexy position, or anything, and Riku couldn't imagine it as being anything but uncomfortable for his friend. And Sora didn't seem to think he was teasing.

Riku knew it would probably look like teasing. A boy leaning over another boy, and he supposed if you bothered to check, their lips were pretty close. But if Sora was kissing him with anything, it was his eyes. Riku's face felt hot when he thought that.

"Do you think I'm a good friend?" Sora asked him, raising his eyebrows childishly.

Riku started. Um, okay.

"Yeah," Riku said. "Of course you are. Sometimes too good."

"Huh?"

Riku shrugged, which was awkward when you were lying down. "Dunno," he said. "You worry about what other people think a lot."

Sora frowned. "Of course I do; don't you?"

Riku raised his eyebrows and half-smiled, but didn't reply. It didn't feel right to reply.

"...I think you're a good friend," Sora said, brushing his nose against Riku's purposefully.

"Okay," Riku said blankly. Sora rolled his eyes and sat up. Well, at least this time Riku hadn't said "get offa me".

"I don't think I'm gonna get back to sleep today," Sora said, glancing at the clock. It was ten past seven in the morning. On a _Saturday_.

"Yeah," Riku agreed. He was pretty tired. He'd eat breakfast and go home.

"You wanna make breakfast?"

"You read my mind."

* * *

They were hit by a pleasant rush of cool air a few steps from the living room, and Sora jumped down the last four stairs like a monkey. "Whaddya want?" he called, heading for the kitchen.

"Just whatever," Riku said, following him inside. He felt a sort of overwhelming relief. It was similar to what he'd been thinking yesterday. He had a person who had him, and it was awkward because Riku had self-assessed communication issues, but it was _there_, which was the thing. Having a non-obligatory friend was weird in itself.

"Okay," Sora said. "Frenchie breakfast it is!" He laughed and reached up to a basket full of bread set on top of one of the shelves. He pulled down nearly half of a baguette and headed over to the cutting board, taking out a knife to saw the bread in half.

"What do you mean?" Riku asked him, pulling himself up to sit on a counter. He watched Sora move around the tiny kitchen easily.

"Small," Sora said, cutting the bread down the middle in order to make a sandwich. "Basically just a baguette with jelly and butter. And cocoa, it's good with cocoa."

Riku made a face that Sora couldn't see and raised his eyebrows. "Hot chocolate for breakfast?"

"Yeah," Sora glanced behind himself to look at Riku and flash him a smile, "Dad used to make it every Sunday for us, almost religiously. It was a tradition. _Un petit déjeuner du chocolat chaud et les tartines._ Can you grab the milk from the fridge? There should be almost a full gallon in there." He yawned and got a jar of jelly from a nearby rack.

"Ah, yeah," Riku said, "Sure." And it was things like that, little curveballs where ten minutes ago they were upstairs and Sora was telling Riku about how hard it was to fall asleep sometimes thinking about that and then he'd say things like "Dad used to make it for us every Sunday" like "Dad" was still _alive_. God. _Je_sus. Sometimes Riku had no idea what went through that kid's mind.

It was awful. Riku wondered, quietly to himself, if everybody had this much trouble understanding what another person was doing. He opened the fridge and took out the gallon of milk, closed the fridge, and stood in front of it with the jug kind of cluelessly.

"Okay," Sora said, "Grab a couple of plastic cups from the cupboard - not the glass ones, yeah - and just fill them up with milk and microwave them for a few minutes."

Riku did.

So, a few minutes later, they were sitting at the living room table, each with two halves of a baguette unevenly smeared with butter and jelly and elaborate hot chocolate.

"You know," Sora said, taking a bite right at the crustiest end of a piece of bread. There was a painful crunch. Riku yawned, placed his elbow on the table and his cheek on his fist, and nodded. "It's funny," Sora said. He looked at Riku.

"What?" Riku asked him, flicking a piece of hair out of his face. Yeah, he should cut it. His fingernails, too.

"Anywhere else," _crunch_, "You'd definitely be the odd one out." He grinned.

Riku frowned. "How do you figure?"

Sora shrugged and sat up taller. "I mean, I'm from France, sure," Sora said, "That's _kind of_ cool. But not only are you from this tiny little paradise island," to which Riku had objections. Choking on dust and then being periodically drowned in torrents of rain which left dead fish washing up on shore for weeks was not paradise. "But you've got _white_ hair, too. Snowy-white." He giggled. "I mean if the two of us were in a bar you'd definitely be the hot foreign one. It doesn't seem like it to you, but I mean it's definitely a stereotype."

Riku rolled his eyes. "Yeah," he said, "The 'hot foreign one', sure." He looked dubiously at his breakfast. Butter on top of jelly seemed like a very bad idea, honestly. It was like mixing orange juice with milk. He shrugged and picked it up, looking at it from underneath. Some dusty yellow crumbs of flour were stuck to the crust.

"Well, at least you _look_ exotic." Sora snorted. "And have we not yet discussed your sexy hips?"

"Shut up!"

Sora just smiled at that and tapped his forehead. Riku didn't need to be told he was being reminded of the "machinery" comment.

Sora paused. "Speaking of which..." he muttered, looking at his cup. He dragged it nearer and blew on it, making little swirls in the foam that had collected on top. "I was kind of wondering..."

"Ah," said Riku. He stared at his own cup of cocoa. It was ridiculous to drink hot chocolate when it was warm and muggy outside and it wasn't even eight in the morning. Muggy. Hn. It was kind of humid.

He knew what was coming next. In a way, it was kind of a relief. He knew that if he hadn't been kept up all night by Sora's stupid little _I'm going to hug you even though you hate it_ moment he'd have been kept up by this. It was pretty much a huge deal. And with another _boy_.

"Yeah," Sora agreed. "You know, if you don't like it, we have cereal or something."

Riku blinked a few times and looked up across the table blankly. Was Sora saying that instead of a relationship he could have "cereal or something"?

"What?" Riku asked.

"The food. If it seems weird to you, I could get you cereal or fruit. I think we have some yogurts." Sora smiled at him, but it was half-assed.

"N-no," Riku said, "It's fine. I just..."

Riku had seen television shows and read some pretty dumb books. In them, when a person ran into another person and they became friends, it was all "and we just _clicked_, I could tell him _everything_, we under_stood_ each other!" It was awful. Because Riku wasn't _sure_, but he was at least _mostly_ sure that he considered Sora a pretty good friend, and he still had no idea what he was talking about half the time. It was hard, it was so fucking _hard_ when you actually had to try.

"So," Sora pinched his lips together and looked up at Riku. Their eyes met for the first time since they were upstairs. "You're gay," he said tentatively.

"Well, I mean - "

"You _might_ be gay," Sora corrected with a roll of his eyes. "And," he continued. He took a big breath, like his lungs felt as hot as Riku's did. "I'm...probably. You know," he said. He sighed, smiled and shook his head. "Look at us, dealing with this like adults."

Riku had a lot of objections to that statement. For one thing, they _weren't_. They were both tiptoeing around the concept. "Might be" and "probably," like they could still back out of it if they wanted to. And for another, there was nothing adult about it. Acting like it was some secret to be hushed up.

"Ha, yeah," Riku coughed awkwardly. Damn. Well, it...didn't matter, anyways. You were allowed to let the little things fall through the cracks.

"But, um," Sora said. "The - point is. We are both, um...open. To the idea." He sighed again. "I'm sorry, you probably don't want to talk about this. I mean you probably just want to forget it ever happened. But I just don't like to leave things unresolved, or..." Riku watched Sora carefully. "I just like to deal with things so that they settle down as soon as they can. So I don't have to all the time...be...worrying about things. If I can fix them."

"Fix" them. Nice word choice. Kissing was a thing that had to be "fixed." Flattering, really.

But it was nice. Sora had been worrying about it. Sora liked to fix things before going on with life. It felt nice, having that connection, Riku knowing that he wasn't all alone there.

"I know what you mean," Riku truthed quietly.

"You do?" Sora asked. "Good. Because I mean," he breathed out in a woosh. "I kind of don't know how exactly I'm supposed to, um...say this. Okay, um," he closed his eyes briefly and then opened them again. "I mean, we both kind of - I dunno. Do you wanna - ?"

Riku didn't think about what he said. "...yeah."

Sora stared at him blankly for a second, and then the corners of his mouth perked up and he tilted his head to the side like a puppy asking to go on a walk. "Cool," he said.

Which was how Riku Tepes started dating Sora Goodwin.

* * *

Riku didn't know how it kept happening, but every time he told himself that he'd just eat breakfast and go home, he ended up staying at least until noon. And of all things, this morning they were watching cartoons.

Course, he'd never watched cartoons with another boy's feet in his lap before, but that seemed like a passing detail. Riku sighed, propping his elbow on the couch arm and chewing on the inside of his cheek.

"Man," Sora said, "I don't know what you're supposed to do when you have a boyfriend. Do I have to buy you flowers now?"

Riku rolled his eyes, smirked and flicked Sora's big toe. "Don't be an asshole." There was a cartoonish whistle from the TV. A couple of little kids passed by outside; their shouts reached inside and bounced off the walls, too cushioned by walls to be comprehensible. Riku wondered who it was who was willing to take their kids out on a day that was so exceptionally gross.

Sora let out a big long breath, leaning his head back to rest it on the other arm of the couch, staring up at the ceiling.

"Hey, do you - "

And promptly cut himself off when he heard soft footsteps coming from down the hall. There was a loud yawn.

Sora straightened up, jerking his feet out of Riku's lap and onto the floor and running a hand through his hair. He licked his lips nervously and stared at the television almost religiously, eyes wide. Riku followed his example to a certain degree; he resettled himself to be entirely facing the TV.

Belle's pajamas were the typical fare; a long nightgown with no sleeves, very loose and with a tiny bow at the top. Her hair was surprisingly smooth, even though it was down, and her eyes seemed more alert than ever.

"Oh!" she said, smiling as she walked into the kitchen. "You boys are already up." She frowned. "It..._is_ Saturday, isn't it?"

Riku always felt a little awkward if he was doing something like lying down or watching TV or eating in Sora's house and Belle walked in. It seemed like trespassing, being comfortable in a house she paid for, because a kid she'd only just adopted had invited him in. She never seemed to realize, of course, and treated him very kindly no matter what. She seemed to like him. But it didn't mean he didn't feel like he was trespassing.

Especially if you counted the fact that she had no idea the whole mess of things between and around him and Sora.

"Yeah," Sora said stiffly, "It is, we just woke up early and neither of us could get back to sleep. That's all."

Riku felt his stomach clench again, like it had before when he'd been wondering who'd kiss who, but it was much less fun. Sora hadn't lied, technically, but it felt like he had.

"Oh," Belle said, popping a couple slices of Wonder bread into the toaster. "I assumed you'd both be sleeping in since you...had such a late night, last night." She said it carefully, too, like she was afraid of stepping out of her bounds. It wasn't the voice of an angry mother. Riku wondered if it was because she was so close to Sora she trusted him not to do anything bad, or because she was so far away she was afraid to ask. The stomach clenched feeling inside of Riku's belly felt a little more like sinking now.

He wondered if he was supposed to tell his own parents. How did you tell your parents that a girl at the party you'd been at had almost died from alcohol poisoning and not make it sound bad? How did you make it sound like you weren't in trouble, and that there was no way _you'd_ been the one breaking the law? He'd already kind of decided not to, but he hadn't even seen them yet. And Belle was right there staring at Sora.

God. _Je_sus. A girl had almost died. _Kairi_ had almost died. She _would have died_ if they hadn't - if Sora hadn't done something.

The whole gay thing didn't really seem like an issue now.

And the hugging thing was barely a fly worth swatting.

"Ah," Sora said, "Yeah." He leaned back into the couch and stared at the floor and said nothing else.

"Is everything okay, sweetie?" Belle asked, raising her eyebrows and walking into the living room. Riku stiffened again, because he felt too comfortable on the couch.

"It's fine, Belle," he said. "I'm fine."

She stared at him for a little while with that concerned mother look that Riku had seen a thousand times before, then frowned, shrugged her shoulders and sat down at the table they'd been eating at just half an hour ago.

Riku became hyperaware of his surroundings, then, because it felt like everything he saw she saw and everything he knew she saw. It was definitely the most humid it had been for a while. He couldn't see the sky from where he sat, but he was willing to bet it was cloudy out there. The room seemed a little dimmer than usual. He wondered if Belle could sense that neither he nor Sora felt comfortable as they had been, or how unnatural their poses were. He wondered if this was how criminals felt; always scared that something they did would give them away.

The dining table was perpendicular to the back of the couch, so the backs of both Riku's and Sora's heads were very visible to her, and Riku had never been more aware of it. He'd more or less banished the thought of authority figures from his mind since last night.

He imagined sitting down with his own mother and telling her, quite straightforward, that yesterday he'd been to a party in the woods, helped to drag a girl sick with alcohol poisoning to a drug store to call her an ambulance, had his first kiss let _alone_ kissed a boy, declared he was gay, and as a finishing touch told her that he now had a boyfriend (sort of). Ah, he could see it now! "Oh - oh dear, Burt, why don't you go call one of those teen help lines? Riku's having a bit of a...crisis." It wasn't that his parents would call a priest to come preach the gay out of him, or anything, but they certainly wouldn't be happy with all the...growing up he'd done.

He hated to think that, but yeah. He probably would not be telling his parents. He wasn't sure he wanted them to know. It didn't matter if they did.

He looked over to Sora, who was frowning and staring at the floor very hard and trying to blink tears out of his eyes. Oh - oh uh-oh. Oh, come _on_, Sora.

Sora mouthed something darkly and wiped at his eye, which was what gave it away. Sora wasn't _crying_, but he seemed to think he should be.

"Sora? Oh, Sora, are you alright!? Are you crying?" Oh, even when she was sad she sounded like a one-woman musical. Belle rushed over to kneel in front of him. It was hard to remember they weren't related. Riku wondered how awkward a subject that was to bring up; the adoption.

"N- no, I just..." Sora closed his eyes and sighed painfully, looking up at Riku. "I don't know." Belle frowned at him, furrowing her eyebrows, and grabbed his chin gently.

"_Regarde-moi, Sora_." It really did feel like being a criminal, hiding everything away. It was horrible. Riku didn't know how Sora was even still sane. He knew if his mother had been doing that...

"Belle," Sora said, "Can I talk to you about something?"

Her eyebrows rose just a little and her mouth opened. "Oh, um, yes. Yes, of course you can, sweetie. You know you can tell me anything, okay?"

"...yeah," he said, glancing at Riku. "I just - okay."

So, Sora led his foster mother into another room, biting his lip and making prolonged eye contact with Riku before closing the door to a spare bedroom off to the side.

Riku couldn't hear what they were saying. He had no idea what Sora was telling her.

Which was a lie. He had a pretty good idea of a _lot_ of things he could be telling his foster mother about himself, about Riku, even about Kairi. He couldn't imagine any of it being easy. But it made sense, to Riku, what Sora was doing; or rather that it was Sora doing it. Sora had said it, hadn't he? He hated to have unfinished things, elephants in the room. And he liked to tell the whole story when he started part of it. That was why Riku knew what he knew about Sora Goodwin. Why he knew how Sora's parents had died, how his brother lived, how he spoke English fluently, why he'd moved here. Riku wondered if Sora ever felt lonely.

It was hard to focus on anything. It was like waiting to hear from colleges after applying. Of course Sora could tell her anything; Sora was her cute little foster son! Riku was just some floozy who'd come in and made the innocent little boy a flaming _queer _and dragged him to _parties _to get _drunk_ and was now sitting on the couch watching cartoons on a Saturday like a lazy _ass_, like a _bum_ with no _future_ who was determined to rob Sora of his future too.

They came out of the room just a few minutes later, together, Belle rubbing Sora's back soothingly. Sora looked like Riku had seen him at least a few times; tired but mostly satisfied, and always just aftera little venting. His mouth was twisted to the side, but otherwise his expression was at an equlibrium.

Riku heard Belle mutter something to Sora, maybe in French, maybe in English - pat him on the cheek. She glanced at Riku, smiled, then headed down the hall again.

"Everything cool?" Riku asked nervously when Sora sat down on the opposite end of the couch, and nearly hit himself for sounding so stupid. Sora stared at him with those eyes, those oughtta-sky eyes even though there wasn't any time for thinking about those sorts of things when life was trying to bitch-slap you in the face.

"Yeah," Sora said dully. "I told her about Kairi, in case she found out about it later through the...parental grapevine and got mad at me for not telling her myself."

"...oh," Riku said. "Okay..."

Sora bit his lip again. "That's it," he added, no trace of mockery in his voice. And Riku didn't have to ask to know what he meant.

* * *

When Riku walked home, it felt like he was being rained on the whole time, even though it was only muggy outside.

The house was pretty full, considering. Mom and Dad and one of his brothers (he couldn't tell who, and barely cared, anyways). Riku felt like a trespasser, which wasn't unusual at all lately, when he walked inside and saw his parents eating breakfast. He didn't say anything, but he did head for his room right away.

He dumped his backpack on his bed, ran a hand through his hair and pulled out the top drawer of his dresser. He rifled through it, looking for a shirt that seemed remotely acceptable for a hospital visit.

His mouth felt dry when he heard his mother say something to his father and get up from the kitchen table.

He stood still, posed like a statue, "Boy Searching For Clean Shirt," until he felt his mom standing in the doorway. He continued to paw around past boxers and socks and basketball shorts. He could have sworn he'd had a plain black shirt in here somewhere.

"Glad you're back, Riku," she said.

"Yeah," he said, "Hi Mom." His mother was Japanese but didn't speak a word of it. Acted the part, though.

He pulled out a wrinkled, but unworn, green shirt that he'd thought he'd lost some time last year.

"So did you and Sora have fun?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Oh, good," she said, walking into his room and tucking some hair behind her ear.

He discarded that shirt; it would probably be too tight anyways. He lifted up a ball of socks and dug near the back corners of the drawer.

"So do you have any other plans for today?" she said.

"Yeah, I'm just here to...get some stuff and then we're gonna...hang out..." Riku muttered, shoving that drawer shut and opening the next one down. His heart felt like a rotating fan that someone was holding in place.

It was that same feeling, the way he'd felt earlier waiting for Belle to find out about the Kairi thing or...one of the other things. But now it was all focused on the one thing. _Can she tell? The things I do, and say, do they give me away? The way I am, it, it's only a matter of time before someone sees it. The...gayness. _It reminded him of being a little kid, sneaking candy from the post-Halloween stash. If a parent saw him he hid it up his sleeve and thrilled from the adrenaline rush of getting away with it. It wasn't even really about eating candy. He just wanted to sneak it under their noses.

"Again?" his mom asked. So there went his heart, _thumpitythumpaDUMP-BUMP._ If you hung out too much at one person's house, did your parents immediately think...that?

"Uh-huh," Riku said. "We might head to the beach. Sora likes looking for, you know, little animals and stuff." Or - or if you knew too much about what they liked and what they didn't. Would that seem...gay? The way he talked about Sora, was it the way people talked about best friends or about boyfriends? _ThumpadabumpadaBUMP._

"Well, if you two end up having dinner together, bring him here, okay? It'll seem rude if you're always eating at their house. And bring your cellphone with you, in case you need anything." He nearly fainted with relief at the gentle reminders, just as they always were. The fact that he and Sora were going to visit Kairi, not the beach, didn't matter.

"Yeah, Mom," he said. "Okay."

* * *

"The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death."**  
- Voltaire****

* * *

  
**

Riku was growing disturbed by the number of times he'd had to visit the hospital in the last month or so. It was only twice, sure, but before that he hadn't had to come in since...well, since he was _born_, frankly.

It was busy on a Saturday morning, which Riku supposed was a bad thing for a hospital. Being busy meant the halls were crowded with unnecessary people. And they were never happy people - old, fat couples visiting their daughters giving birth, or families crowding around grandparents. It was a little depressing.

"Riku," Sora said. "C'mon, this way."

"Coming," Riku called, following Sora down another hall and through a set of doors. "How far away is she?"

"Next floor," Sora said distractedly, trying to look through the reinforced glass windows in each door as he walked. The hospital was not entirely white. The tiles were patterned unevenly in green and purple and brown, though they were chipped in a few places; the walls held pictures of happy babies and men holding the hands of smiling bald women. It smelled sharp and clean like a new car. Unnatural, even offensive.

The clattered up some stairs, covered in textured rubber for traction, to the next floor.

And, when they finally found Kairi, she was playing absently with a piece of her hair.

There was no heaviness, no weight when they walked into the room. There wasn't the crushing awfulness Riku had felt when he'd seen Sora, because Kairi had two parents and a little brother, and she wasn't asleep. She didn't have a cast, either.

Her eyes were tired, bloodshot, and she had lines under them. Her hair was messy and she was pale, jaundiced, even. But it was nothing in comparison. Riku remembered that Tuesday, coming into Sora's room in the near-empty hospital; watching him sleep in that sad little curled up position with his arm flung out to one side like he couldn't stand seeing it and choking down some sort of horrible dream, all alone.

Sora Goodwin had seen his parents die and his brother separated from him and he still seemed like the most normal guy Riku had ever met. And here Kairi was, with two parents and a little brother, and she looked like the world had fallen on her shoulders.

For a second, Riku felt a flash of the anger he knew Sora must have been talking about when he told Riku about being mad at television shows. Because they thought they were _so_ dramatic, and here people were, having to live that crap. He wondered why Sora wasn't mad all the time.

Sora grabbed Riku's hand and laced their fingers, dragging him into the room and right next to the bed. He was a few centimeters shorter than Riku, which Riku'd never noticed before.

"Hey Kairi!" he said, beaming at her. She looked up, her mouth open and her eyebrows slack for just a second before "Hey Sora!"

Riku thought about their laced hands, held just below the rim of the bed out of Kairi's sight. His heart started to feel like a fan again. She was a girl, she was intuitive, and she probably gossiped - !

_No she doesn't,_ said some other part of his brain. _She's just the opposite_.

Riku found he didn't care. But he didn't take his hand out of Sora's; he didn't know why. Holding hands was a girly thing to do.

"You feeling okay?"

Kairi grinned, but then paused and closed her mouth. There had been something sort of blackish on her teeth. She raised her hand up to her mouth and touched her fingers to her lips and smiled with her mouth closed. "I think they made me swallow some sort of weird stuff to dilute the alcohol or something," she muttered from behind her hand. "But apparently it's gonna stain like this all day. Tastes like mud, too," she laughed.

"Ugh," Sora wrinkled his nose and squeezed Riku's hand. "Do you have to keep drinking it?"

Kairi shook her head. "No, they already pumped my stomach. I'm just still here because...I don't know, they like, want to keep an eye on me or something?" she laughed again, awkardly, then looked to the side.

"Oh, yeah," Sora said knowingly. "I had to stay like a week after surgery here. It's so annoying!"

Kairi looked at him and giggled and said "I know! What do they think is gonna happen? I'm not going to like, spontaneously get drunk."

And then she backed off, facially, looked down and sat up a little better in the bed. She pressed her hand harder against her mouth.

"Ah," she said, closing her eyes tightly. She opened them again. They were black, now, since her contacts had been taken out. Riku liked her better that way. "Th-thanks," she said meekly, "For...I mean, yeah. Oh God, I'm gonna puke."

"It's no problem," Sora said, smiling at her. "We kind of - well, I kind of owed you the favor." He watched her wretch once and then open her eyes to look at him. She shrugged and gave him a weak smile.

"Nothing to throw up anymore," she explained.

"You're gonna be fine, right?" Riku surprised himself by asking, even though he spoke softly and looked down. For all the world it sounded like he could have asked her what time it was. It was the opposite of the way he usually was, which was to say: telling himself he'd get out of bed by the count of ten and then not doing it. Or telling himself to say something to someone on the count of ten, and then not doing it. He just said it.

"Oh, yeah, yeah," Kairi nodded and frowned. "I'm fine. At least, physically. I don't know _what_ my parents are going to do to me..." she leaned back into her baby-blue, non-patterned, neutral hospital pillows and sighed. "They just left, actually. My mom's coming back in an hour to check on me." She sniffed. "They actually _brought_ my little brother to see me. He's _twelve_ and they brought him to see his drunk-on-her-ass older sister. Maybe they like, wanted to make an example out of me."

She crossed her arms and blinked and looked to the side again.

Riku didn't say anything else.

"Hey now," Sora frowned a sideways frown and put his free hand over hers, even though it had a rough cast on it. His fingers, at least, touched the back of her hand. "I'm sure that's not it. They're probably just worried about you! And just...glad you're okay."

Kairi coughed dryly and put the corners of her palms against her eyes. "I know that, I know, they're glad I'm safe right now." She sighed. For a few moments, nobody said anything. "For now I can ride the pity train, at least until I get out of the hospital. That's not..." She looked right into Riku's eyes then.

He definitely liked her better, when she wasn't wearing contact lenses, and when she was being sincere.

"For now," she said, "I'm just shoulda-woulda-coulda-ing myself until I go crazy."

"Yeah," Riku said agreeably, because it seemed like he ought to say something. "It's...I'm sure you'll be fine." He felt so awkward, standing, hiding the one hand.

"I'm sorry, can I tell you guys something?" she asked, switching her gaze between the both of them.

The hospitals rooms seemed...whiter, than he remembered.

"What is it?" Sora said softly.

"I - I really don't want to go back to school. I mean, I know we've only got like a week and a half left, but still, I mean..." She wiggled around in the sheets. You could just see the outline of her toes, if you looked, in the blankets.

"I'm gonna be 'that drunk girl', you know? Like, that's who I'll be. The girl who got drunk and almost died." She sniffled or sighed or summat. She kept wiggling around. "I sound like a cautionary tale for health class, huh?"

Sora looked at Riku, who met his eyes with an unwavering stare that pierced the back of your skull and dared you, goddamn _dared_ you to look away or to say anything to him, or to pull yourself away, dared you to do it. Sora looked at Kairi again.

"I'm the kid who tried to slit his own wrists," he said quietly, pressing his lips together. "I'm the kid who tried to commit suicide. That's who I am at school."

Kairi opened her mouth, but Sora cut her off. "I know it's different since I didn't actually try to do it, but I'm still that kid at school. When people think about suicide, they go to me." He patted her arm. "Believe me. Being the girl who got drunk _one time_ is gonna be _way_ easier, doofus!" She gave him a sort of halfhearted giggle. Riku could tell she wanted to be left alone. She was in a mood where she didn't _want_ to feel better.

Riku was pretty sure Sora saw this, and kept going. "Plus," he said. "If anyone says anything out of line, I'll make Riku...glare his death glare at them." Kairi raised her eyebrows and looked at Riku.

"Grr," said Riku blandly. "I'm a bulldog."

_That_ got Kairi to laugh out loud, which she seemed to regret; she held that delicate little white hand to her mouth again.

When she'd recovered, she looked at them both again. Right at their faces, just a few feet above their linked hands. Hidden hands. Could she tell? Girls were intuitive, weren't they? Oh God. He could forget about it for a short while, but it always came back.

"You know," she said conversationally, "In seventh grade, I had the _biggest_ crush on you, Riku."

Riku basically choked on his own spit then. "Ah, um - " Well? What was he supposed to say? "Thank you"?

"Oh, no no no - " she waved her hands in front of her torso to stop his train of thought. "I don't _now_, don't worry! I mean, no offense, or anything. But in seventh grade," she hissed through her teeth, "_Ye-ah_...I dunno."

The bed squeaked a little, and she giggled. Riku basically had nothing to say. He wondered if she'd meant that to be flattering, or if she was like Sora and just _said_ things without expecting anything to come of them.

Kairi's eyes were tired, hot; her hair was frizzy from the unusually persistent humidity. Perhaps, if Riku had been bothering to pay attention, he would have noticed the way she consciously ran her hands over her body, as if to assure herself it was still there; the way that she never let her gaze wander from the two boys in her room like she was afraid they, too, would leave. He did notice these things, but didn't stop to wonder why she was doing any of them; Kairi was still a ditz, and a spaz, and she had brought her present upon herself, to him. Sora noticed these things, too. He didn't hide his cast.

"Actually, it's pretty funny," she said eventually, laughing a little preemptively. "I was talking with my friend yesterday, and she totally has this theory that you're asexual. I mean, we weren't, like, talking about _you_ or anything, but yeah." She giggled. "Can you _believe_ that?"

"Hm," Sora rolled his eyes and squeezed Riku's fingers. "If there's one thing I know about Riku, it's that he's most definitely _barely_ sexual."

_Yeah, sexual like a **bulldog**,_ Riku thought sarcastically to himself. He considered saying it out loud for a few laughs and decided against it. It would be a...weird thing for him to say. He was overthinking things.

He looked up again, then, to the lights, letting his hand fall out of Sora's casually. He thought about being blinded by them. Of all places, a hospital seemed like a good place to have a medical crisis. He thought about just staring at the lights until the sunspots in his eyes wouldn't go away, and never looking at anything, ever again. He wondered if it would really make any sort of a difference. He wondered if moths had good eyesight, or if they needed it, flying around in the dark all the time and flocking towards open flames.

"Oh?" Kairi looked falsely intrigued, and happy to change the subject. "Really? Does Sora know all about your secret trysts with girls, Riku?"

"Actually - " Sora started to speak and was stopped when Riku snapped his head back down to look at him.

Riku had never really thought about communication, before. He'd always assumed that if he had a secret, he'd be the one to tell it. That Sora would _know_ to _shut up_ because Riku knew that was the best idea. But _Sora _wasn't _Riku_. Sora Goodwin was not the loneliest person in the world. He looked at Sora very carefully; looked at his blue-blue eyes and his brown hair made of coarse spikes, and his primary-colors clothing with too-big shoes and bare hands and a giant white cast. He knew he couldn't stop another person from doing something. Nobody read minds.

"Oh my gosh!" Kairi said, beaming, "Wow, I mean, really? Honestly. Honestly, I _never _would have - wait."

Riku felt something in the back of his mind shatter like a piece of glass and get rushed through his bloodstream in pumps, shards, poking at his chest and legs.

"So you guys are dating? I mean, each other? Like, I don't want to be forward or anything, but is that right?"

Which meant he'd _done_ something or _said_ something, Hell, even _thought_ something and given himself away which meant that anyone could see it, like he was wearing it on his sleeve everyone knew, everyone could see it like he had on a _poster_ board or something that screamed "I AM GAY" to the _whole_ fucking _world_ - ! It wasn't _fair_! He didn't even know if he _was_! He didn't want to _think _about that, he had better things to do, like pick out colleges and work at summer jobs and learn to drive. He'd be _leaving_ this stupid island soon, anyways.

Ah.

And therein lied Riku Tepes's peace. It didn't _matter_ if the people on this island knew he was sort of gay. Because he only had to last another year until he could go somewhere else. Dump them all. Dump the whole island like a gigantic landfill.

And what? Be a hateful shit somewhere else, but in college this time?

The thing Riku Tepes hated most about Sora Goodwin was that he seemed to love everybody, and he was making Riku hate his own self.

"Ah," Sora said. "Well, yup. Basically. Right, Riku?"

"Uh-huh..." Riku said, staring absently at nothing at all, really, and licking his lips. "Right."

Kairi made the sort of face people made when they looked at kittens or very small people. Her eyebrows raised, her mouth open and smiling. "Aw!" she said, which was fucking condescending, "I never would have guessed!" Really?

Riku didn't say anything, so Sora did. "Don't - tell anybody, okay? Please?"

"Of course I won't. That's your business," she said diplomatically, which was surprising.

Sora smiled at her. "Good," he said, "'Cause Riku's acting all self-conscious again."

Riku rolled his eyes. "Grr," he said again, just as blandly.

They laughed.

* * *

Probably the most horrifying moment of the whole visit was when Sora's board-certified psychiatrist came into Kairi's hospital room to speak with her. Riku had never been in a room in which the majority of the people were going to mandated therapy, as far as he knew. It was a little worrying.

And the shrink had _smiled_ at Sora and asked him about how school was. And then she'd carefully, quietly, sneakily tiptoed up to and around the topic of Riku, who stood there like a chicken waiting to be cornered, with a little "So, is this the infamous Riku?" which had made Riku feel kind of weird. That he was a topic in therapy sessions. That was a little weird.

He'd felt like he was being examined even closer.

His train of thought had basically been _Oh God she's a psychologist or no wait a psychiatrist that's even **worse** can't they smell gay on people it's probably really obvious to them I don't know I don't know **I don't know** but she's a shrink they can tell things about people that people can't tell about themselves and she can probably **see** it or **tell** by the things that I do and say and think and the way that I act and talk to Sora or Kairi even or maybe just me standing here means I have something to hide_

Until she'd requested to speak privately with Kairi and the two boys had been promptly, if politely, nudged out of the room to stand in the hallway.

"Are you mad?" Sora asked Riku quietly. How could he do that? Ask it so simply? Riku didn't know.

"No," Riku said, "Just surprised, I guess."

"Oh, good," Sora said. He never seemed as crazy cheerful when it was just him and Riku. Maybe he thought he didn't need to be. Maybe he just wasn't. "Kairi told me her best friend says she's bisexual, anyways, so I figured she'd be fine with it. Oh," he said, turning to Riku, "You've got...you've got a, uh," he snapped his fingers and frowned. "Oh, I _know _this word..._un cil_..." He shook his head and tapped his cheek. "Right here."

"A smudge?" Riku asked, rubbing just under his own eye with an index finger. "Dirt, you mean?"

"No," Sora said. He pointed to his eye. "I can't remember. Uh, the little hairs on the edges of your..." he drifted off again. "Man, I'm so bad with these. I remember, I do, the bits around the eye...they all have eye in them, don't they? _La paupière et le sourcil sont..._" he frowned. "Never mind, just tell me."

"You mean eyelid and eyebrow?"

Sora clapped his hands, a bit too loudly, and then snorted and looked around to see if anyone had heard him. "Yes!" he said. "That's it. So the hairs on your eyelid...?"

"Eyelash?"

"Eyelash! I knew it was something really obvious like that! I can never remember those. You've got an eyelash on your cheek."

Riku rolled his eyes and kept rubbing his thumb over his face to get rid of it.

"No, no, other one," Sora was saying, "Here, let me." He wiped a slightly sweaty thumb under Riku's left eye; Riku caught a whiff of vegetables, and summer, like freshly mowed grass.

"Thanks," he said quietly.

"Um," Sora said. "We don't have to tell anybody else. You don't even have to tell your parents, if you don't want. But can I - I mean, it's just because I don't like to lie. So, my psychiatrist, and Belle - "

"Sure," Riku told him. "Yeah. Whatever." Just one more year. If it was so bad, he could go to school in...Finland, or someplace. Finland seemed pretty cool. And very far away.

"It's not that big a deal," Sora muttered, almost to himself, "It's really not. Destiny Island isn't super-religious or something, anyways, and it's not like we're walking around making out and like, sharing ice cream or anything. And I have never heard either of us use the word 'fabulous'." He giggled. "Hey Riku?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember, on the first day I came to this school, I asked you what a 'fairy' was and you told me it was a gay person?"

"Nn." Riku leaned against the wall, and his hair fell out from behind his ear and got in his eye. It looked almost artificial, in the fluorescent lights.

Sora laughed again. "I think...I don't really care. If I'm a fairy, I have magic powers, right?"

Riku had never thought about it like that. He hadn't really thought about it at all. He didn't say anything, though, because Sora wasn't finished.

"What I think people don't get about magic, in the real world," he said, "Is that magic's never the thing that does the finding. You have to look for it, and you have to know what it is once you find it."

"Sure," Riku said, "Guess so." Oh jeez. He was dating a five-year-old.

Sora leaned in and touched his lips to Riku's, very innocent, very little movement, and no teeth-clicking or anything. Riku let him, and closed his eyes, though nothing could disspell the paranoia. He knew, even when he leaned back into it, he was aware; the steady rush at the back of his mind of _what if someone sees what if the doctor's about to come out or if a nurse comes down the hallway or a patient or a **parent** oh God what if somebody I **know** comes down the hallway_

It was the last kiss they would share their junior year of high school. Two, that was all in total.

And even when Sora backed up, just a little, to look at Riku's whole face and smile a dopey smile, the thoughts didn't really stop. Well, they did somewhat. They were cut off but - unfinished, on the brink as if permanently paused. Hanging by a thread at the edge of a cliff such that Riku's mind could not sit, not even take a breath, all because of Sora,

* * *

A/N: .

Oh man, I so would hate me right now. Ending a chapter with a comma. Blame Lewis Thomas. "Notes on Punctuation," PAH! That bastard robbed me of sleep...

Seriously, though. Thoughts? Too unrealistic? Slow-moving? Dull? Too much dialogue?

* * *


	12. I Only Wish

* * *

**Someone Would Listen.**

**

* * *

**

A/N: Listen, so last chapter was kind of depressing. And trust me, this chapter isn't me chickening out. It's meant to prove a point. But suffice to say that last chapter is to this chapter as Uchiha Sasuke is to sparkly rainbow unicorns.

...gay ones.

* * *

"The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."**  
- Mark Twain****

* * *

**

* * *

When Belle decided to adopt a teenage boy, she knew it wasn't going to be easy. She knew he'd have issues about his parents, possibly siblings, maybe refuse to acknowledge her as a figure of authority and all of that. And it took two years, _two years_ of being vetted by people and having her private and work life invaded, her personal history researched. "A single parent? Aren't you a little young for this? Is there a reason you've never married? Do you think you will get married?" She shuddered to think what the process would have been if she'd wanted to adopt a baby.

She hadn't expected Sora to make it so easy. All of it. He had come to her like a happy-boy-kit, just add time and he sprung up to a cheerful optimist who talked about friendship like it was the most wonderful thing in the world. He even spoke fluent English! When she'd had to move to Destiny Island for her job, he'd said to her, word for word - "Cool, I've always wanted to live on an island! It's like a tiny little world all by itself."

If there was an ideal orphan, it was Sora. He maintained his relationship with his brother on his own, he made friends, did alright in school, even agreed to the skin graft. He never asked for much at all, and he never wanted much. He'd been only been angry - sincerely, hideously furious, and even that was mild, and kind of sad - once. About a month in.

_"Sora? Sora, honey, you need to come out of your room. You've got a doctor's appointment."_

_"No."_

_"You have to. Sora, I'm coming in - oh, Sora! You haven't even gotten out of bed at all today!"_

_"I know that. I don't **want** to. There's isn't any **point**."_

_"Sora, it's almost two o'clock in the afternoon - "_

_"**Why is everyone always telling me what time it is**!?"_

_"...Sora..."_

_Sniffles. "I - I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean it..."  
_

Which was why she was surprised and almost...relieved, the one morning on the first day of the last week of school, when Sora came up to her while she was poking around in the fridge and said "Belle?"

He called her Belle, not Mom, and she understood that.

"Yes, sweetie?"

"I just...I guess...uh, listen."

She closed the fridge and turned to him, smiled, placed a hand on his arm. "I am listening."

"I - I'm pretty much gay." He winced when he said that, closed his eyes.

Oh, _Sora_. Why _that_. Belle couldn't help him with that.

She pursed her lips. "Okay," she said. And he opened his eyes and he _smiled_ at her so hard and so bright you'd think she'd told him that dragons really do exist. She put her hand on his cheek. She didn't have a problem with it, but it was so _sad_ for her poor boy. He had a hard enough time of it, and being gay would just open up a whole knew world of bullies and hatred and loneliness. And she wouldn't be able to help him with _any_ of it. Oh, oh, oh, Sora, and you look so relieved to be telling me. She wondered, sometimes, if despite all of the nasty things he'd gone through, he still didn't understand how the world was meant to work.

Didn't understand why people hated other people, because he couldn't bring himself to hate anybody.

"Okay?" he asked her.

"That's fine, Sora," she said, "I'm glad you told me." Oh, and she'd have to tell the therapist about this, too, wouldn't she? She knew she couldn't help him with this.

"Oh, um," he said, "The other thing is that, well..."

"Ah, no," she said, holding up one finger. "Let me guess. You crashed the car?"

"No," he rolled his eyes.

"You lost the cat?"

"_Be-elle_..."

She laughed and put her hands on her hips. "Well?"

"Um, you know Riku?"

"I should think so, you two are glued at the hips."

Sora sighed and hopped up onto the counter. It was a little awkward; his cast clicked on the surface of the granite and he nearly slipped. He was getting it off next week.

"'Bout him..."

Which was the only other event of consequence that happened junior year.

* * *

That summer, about, say, mid-August, Riku spent his first full night in the same bed with another person. He didn't count having nightmares as a little kid and making his parents comfort him, and besides, those weren't full nights. Just however long it took him to calm down.

Thinking along these lines, Riku wondered, just before he fell asleep, why there wasn't a verb for that. You could dream, and you could have a dream. But you couldn't nightmare.

But he fell asleep for the first time next to another warm body who made noises and kicked in his dreams, and was, to Riku's dismay, just as touchy-feely while unconscious as he was fully awake. It was so hot, it was so goddamn hot outside.

Which was why Riku was awake at four in the morning tonight, in Sora's room, on his bed. It was plenty dark inside, just tinted blue, and they weren't under the covers at all. It was far too hot, even if it was dry heat. Riku was wearing boxer shorts and a wifebeater and he was _still_ in danger of becoming permanently glued to the boy next to him with sweat. There was a fan set in the window to his back, though he wouldn't have known it if it wasn't making and incessant humming noise; it was having no effect at all.

Sora was, naturally, fast asleep and had his obliviously warm arms wrapped around Riku's torso with his forehead pressed against Riku's exposed collarbone. God, it was so fucking _hot_, he didn't know how Sora could _stand _it.

It was at this point that Riku had given up on thinking about things as "gay" and "not-gay". He didn't really care. When Sora had told him to sleep on the bed, Riku had thought to himself "Well, he'll just sit on me if I disagree, anyways" and did it.

He wondered, idly, if he would have ever realized he was capable of having a boyfriend if it weren't for Sora. It wasn't that Sora was super-special, or anything, it was just that he always ended up being the one who forced Riku to try new things.

Riku thought about that, and looked down at the person curled around him. Sora's hair poked him in the chin, vaguely, and his eyes were shut tight. Riku could feel his warm, solid body deflate and expand with every breath, calm, even, perhaps content. He was covered in Sora-smell, but so was everything around him; the blankets, the flattened pillow underneath Riku's head, the giraffe poster on the wall.

It was strange, a little. Riku always felt like an impostor here.

He looked back down again to the kid who had wrapped himself up in Riku's arms; Sora's eyes were open, now, but he didn't move. He just stared at Riku's chest and blinked sometimes.

"Hey," Riku said, nudging him with his elbow.

Sora didn't say anything.

"Are you alright?"

He shook his head. "Sorry," he said, "Bad dream." Which was funny, because Riku hadn't heard him make any noises or talk in his sleep.

Very hesitantly, Riku patted him on the back; it was awkward and contrived, and he was sure it wasn't helping at all. But, Sora needed to talk, and Riku listened to him.

"Sometimes I can't remember their faces without pictures anymore," Sora said, squeezing Riku even tighter around the middle, "And it makes me feel so sick I want to get sucked into the pit of my stomach." Oh, he was such a sad little boy, sometimes, late at night, when only Riku could see him.

"Shh," Riku said, more for something to say than that he wanted Sora to shut up, and brought his hand up to cradle the back of Sora's head. He felt like a total idiot, when he did that. He felt sappy and lame. He couldn't turn off that part of himself; being angry, pessimistic, judgmental. It was inborn in him or, if not that, conditioned carefully for years and years. Things like that aren't undone in six months. If a person met Riku Tepes, and he was not with or near Sora Goodwin, he would probably still fix you with his nasty stare, because he didn't know what else to do.

He found his thoughts drifting in this direction as he stared over Sora's head to the posters on his wall, and listening to the monotonous hum of the fan's blades like a helicopter, _fwumpafwumpafwumpa_. Sora wasn't crying or anything; he was just staring at Riku's collarbone thoughtfully.

Sora took a shuddering breath and exhaled; Riku felt an uncomfortable rush of hot air permeate his thin shirt.

"S'okay," Riku muttered, even though he knew Sora didn't want to hear things like that. Didn't want to hear empty comforts. Riku didn't know how to do anything else. He slipped his fingers to massage the back of Sora's skull, spreading his fingertips out, then in under his hair.

"It's not like you've forgotten _them_," Riku told the top of Sora's head. Sora shook his head.

"I knew what they looked like in May," Sora said. "Every single day I thought about."

"Jesus," Riku grumbled, giving into a brief whim and bringing his nose down to bump Sora's head, "No wonder you're so screwed up."

"I was afraid of forgetting," Sora said defensively, "And then when I stopped - "

"You remember their names?"

"Yeah."

"And you remember they were your parents, and you remember that you love them?"

"Yeah..." Sora said, sounding a little apprehensive. Almost as if he knew what Riku was going to say, and had already decided he didn't want to hear it.

"I think..." Riku realized he had no idea where he was going when he started to say this. Well, he couldn't _tell_ Sora that. Now would be the time to pull a Sora, which was to say to make something up that sounds poetic enough to fool somebody. "Well," he said, "You can't see those things in a photo. So...that's what's...important. 'Cause you can check a photo to remember what they looked like," he felt Sora wince against him when he used the past tense, "But you can't check one for...yeah."

"That's so condescending," Sora said offhandedly. He didn't sound angry about it. Only...underwhelmed.

"Sorry."

"No," Sora said, bringing his head up to look at Riku right in the eyes. "I think you're sort of right. Just...it doesn't work for this situation. I don't think anything anyone can say will make me feel better, anyways, though." Riku sat up on one elbow and Sora compliantly rolled onto his back to make room.

"Okay," Riku said, pulling a piece of Sora's hair away from his eye. "But you'll feel better in the morning."

Sora smiled at him. "Yeah."

They stayed like that for a while, and he didn't know about Sora, but Riku felt his mind go sort of numb in the hazy darkness. He didn't think about things being weird or not weird. They just were. Sora unhappy made him kind of unhappy, so he tried to make Sora happy, and they just were. It was pleasant, dark and thoughtless, even though sometimes he felt the pull of something else telling him _no, you're wrong, this is dumb, it's stupid, it's really gay, stop acting like you know so much_, something so easy to see again, it never came all the way in.

He just knew that he wanted to, so he leaned down when Sora leaned up and he kissed him. And Riku knew that it felt nice, kissing Sora, and he wondered if it was just because kissing itself felt nice regardless of your partner, but he didn't care about that either. He just knew he liked doing it, and he didn't really feel like stopping so he pushed a little further and Sora gladly let him, and started to move his lips and, eventually, his tongue too. And Riku just knew that it felt nice, at four in the morning, when you couldn't really sleep and your sweat was like glue.

It wasn't the first time they'd had a deep kiss, but Riku sometimes wondered if they were doing it wrong. There was almost never any hot-handed pawing at clothes or, or gasping or anything like that. The most there usually was was Sora would slink his arms around Riku's neck, push some hair out of his face, maybe cup his cheek. Riku didn't count that one time when they went swimming.

But it was nice, it was so goddamn nice, when there was no greedy lust, or whatever it was that made people act like that, in movies, or books. Even in real life. Riku rested the palm of his hand flat on Sora's shoulder, and ran his thumb along the edge of shirt collar and skin, keeping his eyes closed.

Sora was warm, but he was not bad warm. He was not warm the way the dry half of the island was warm with dry heat, and he wasn't warm the way the wet half of the island was, humid. Just nice warm. Human warm.

He had discovered, that summer, that Sora sometimes did not think that if something was nice they should just keep doing that. He curled his hand around the back of Riku's neck and pulled him closer, and deeper, and kissed him harder. But Riku didn't really mind if Sora wanted to do that. It felt good, a sort of ticklish tingling, when something brushed against the roof of your mouth. Like a tongue.

Without really knowing why, Riku detached from Sora with a quiet wet noise and lifted his head back up to look at him. Sora still had one hand on the back of Riku's neck, and he was smiling an idiot grin. Still laying belly-up on the bed, he brought his thumbs and forefingers together in a little square, squeezing one eye shut and holding it in front of Riku's face.

"Click," Riku said, hovering over him with his face set to neutral.

Sora smiled at him and put a hand on his forehead, pushing it up until Riku's bangs stood up. His hand was cool, pleasantly so, and he rubbed his thumb on the bridge of Riku's nose and giggled. "Yeah," he said quietly.

He took his hand away, rolled onto his side and switched on a bedside lamp; he stayed between Riku's hands on the covers, either side of him, and did Riku remember doing that? He didn't remember making an arm cage for Sora, but it was there, and nobody else moved his arms for him. Sora rolled back belly-up, and now the yellow wash of the light was in both of their faces. Riku didn't know about himself, but it threw Sora into fuzzy relief. His right cheek shone with a sheen of sweat, caught by the lamp, and his left was still a vague shadow, and he was still smiling between them. He laced his arms around Riku's neck, stopped smiling, and looked to the side.

"It was a really weird dream," he said, "But I remember almost none of it."

Riku sighed and buckled his elbows, so he was right on top of Sora, and his head was to the side. "Yeah," he said, "I know. I get those. It's fine."

Sora shook his head, ran one hand through Riku's hair, and wiggled a little, which felt really...well. "Let me up," he whined, "I'm thirsty."

"You're always thirsty," Riku said, even though it didn't mean anything and wasn't true, and nuzzled Sora's cheek before rolling off of him. When he'd come to his senses, a few hours later, he would wonder why he never seemed to mind things like this in the early morning. The girly behavior. In the morning, all that mattered was that it felt...nice.

--

Sora had his glass of water, downstairs in the kitchen, and he'd made Riku come down there with him. So, when he headed back upstairs, Riku held back. Not for long. A minute, maybe two.

He leaned against the granite counter, and let it dig into his back, because it was cold. He stared at the refrigerator across from him, old, and white, with a few novelty magnets.

He dug his hands into his hair, both of them, and knew that he probably looked ridiculous and was glad no one was there to see him. He tightened his grip on his head until he felt a dull ache in his skull, and squeezed his eyes shut. When they started to hurt, he opened them, waited for his vision to clear up, and went back upstairs.

Fuckity fuck fuck.

* * *

And summer passed like this.

* * *

"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls."  
- **George Carlin**

**

* * *

**

It was only one week until school started, and Riku had done something he'd never really thought about doing before. He sneaked out of his house just before when he knew his mother would call him for dinner, barefoot. And it felt like he hadn't been alone in such a long time, it felt like every time he'd tuned in to what was happening, Sora was there. Stupid Sora. Listen to this, tell me that, kiss me twice, _Sora_. Riku was an antisocial person by nature.

The sidewalk had been baking in the summer heat all day, and felt like hot coals under his feet. He imagined his skin drying, shriveling and cracking like soil in a desert in ancient hexagonal shapes with waving lines of heat coming off it. He imagined his skin finally coming off in flakes, like he himself was snowing, white as his goddamn hair, until all that was left was soft pale baby skin. He thought about things like that often, when he was dirty, or sweaty. He thought of his face like a mask, something he could just peel layers off of and have the same face, underneath - but with no scars or smudges. He knew, though, that if he started over it would just get dirty again.

He walked, barefoot, fancying that his feet were cracking like deserts, all the way down to the most hated beach on the whole island. It was right at one of the points of the island, at the base of the mountain range, and suffered all sorts of awful weather. Storms from both sides of the coast pushed giant rocks over the sand such that there was hardly a place to sit, let alone lie down in all the rubble. And it always seemed to catch the gusts of rain that were meant for the dry half of the island.

Oceans on Destiny Island, regardless of where, were almost always sickeningly blue and beautiful. There was a stretch of white sand that dipped into the water for thirty meters before a dark green bed of kelp began, a stark black line. You could always find animals crawling around, baby fish or crabs, tiny yellow snails, sea urchins.

Here was different. It was where the island met, in a peak, and things crashed together. Kelp and algae hung tiredly to the sides of weather-beaten rocks, rising and falling with the water, and there was always an angry wet rushing sound. And nobody came, ever. Biologists didn't come, because there was hardly anything to study here that couldn't be studied somewhere else less dangerous. The only animals were obstinate crabs which hunkered down underneath boulders and snapped at the slow-moving snails. Riku never really came here, at all.

But he carefully, so carefully, levered himself down from the path onto the rock nearest him. It was the size of half a school bus, grey like wet clay, and soaked from a recent rain. It felt wonderfully cold to Riku's cracked desert feet, and he walked all the way down it and hopped carefully onto a darker boulder, and continued rock-hopping until he got as close as he dared to the shore. He sat down and dangled he feet over the edge of the boulder.

There was a plastic bottle floating in the angry black water, which beat against the rock and, by extension, his feet, soothingly. He stooped down and snatched the bottle up, holding it up to the cloud-covered sun. It began to rain, quite hard, and so his view of the inside of the bottle of seawater was blurry. There was some tiny animal inside, like a shrimp or an underwater pill bug, swimming around with tiny little legs and bumping into the sides. Riku shrugged and upended the bottle over the water, then held it over his head like an exceptionally bad umbrella.

He tossed it back into the ocean, intending to get it out of his sight, but the waves soon brought it back and crashed it onto the rocks again. He laughed, quietly, and kicked it with his foot. And then he laughed louder and ignored the rumbling thunder, leaning back and folding his hands behind his head, staring up at the puffy grey sky. It was like being stuck in your own tiny world, with the rain. Like a little blanket. It kept everything else out and rained freshwater on saltwater.

He kicked his feet against the boulder absently, felt the dull thud as they connected and bounced back out. He closed his eyes and felt the rain on his face, like shower water but...softer, somehow, more purposeful and less abrasive, like it couldn't get anything clean.

And his mother would be furious with him when he got home, and his father would back her up because that's what the two of them did, and he would stand there like a wet dog in the rain and listen to them and apologize. He would go up to his room and take off his shirt and wring it out, right on the covers of the bed, and get every drop of rainwater mixed with seawater out and on there, and he'd do the same with his hair, and then flop down on the bed and let the wetness touch his bare back, and he'd think about flying and day lilies and dying and horses and lights and exacto knives and whatever the Hell else came into his brain, because he could, and needed to. He thought about leaving the island, and about college, and about graduation, and going back to school. And he fell asleep thinking about these things.

* * *

"In the end, you'll know which people really love you. They're the ones who see you for who you are and, no matter what, always find a way to be at your side."  
- **Randy Milholland**

**

* * *

**

Kairi flopped down next to Sora and Riku on the wall.

"So," she said, "What'd you guys do over summer? My parents dragged me back to Japan." She sighed. "_Again_."

Both of the boys were silent for a few seconds, Riku because he was on autopilot, before Sora cheerfully replied, "Last week Riku ran around my house naked for forty-five minutes in a row!"

Riku sat forward abruptly with his eyes widened, coughing out quite loudly. Oh dear _God_, Sora. He would bring that up. You would think, with a girl being present, that some things were off limits.

"Hey," he said, waving his pointer finger at Kairi, "Sora is making that sound way worse than it is."

Sora was giggling very hard, and it wasn't helping Riku's dignity very much. Kairi raised her eyebrows and grinned.

"Well?" she said. "I'd love to hear this."

"I - it's just that we'd just gone to the beach, and - I was wearing a _towel_," Riku protested, prodding Sora in the arm. "First off, I was wearing a _towel_, because we'd just come back from the beach and I had taken a _shower_. And I needed to find my watch."

"Hey," Sora said, "I'm not complaining." He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. "I could look at you _a-a-all_ day, baby."

"Dear God," Riku hissed, then whacked Kairi in the thigh when she started to laugh hysterically. "Is nothing sacred to you people?"

Kairi smiled at him and nudged his knee with her hand. "I think you guys are cute. It's cool, that you can be so normal about it."

"I just think it's funny," Sora said, and didn't direct it to anyone in particular, "How technically Riku should be the _least _fucked up of all three of us but - "

Riku reached an arm behind Kairi and shoved Sora so that he fell to the side, giggling, and flopping his flip-floppy feet onto Kairi's lap. He slid off of the wall and leaned up against it with his arms crossed, though Kairi and Sora (once he sat up) continued to sit, dangling their feet over the edge as if they were on big boulders in between the two halves of the island. Riku thought about sticking one earbud in his ear, but decided against it.

"Hey, Riku."

"Yeah, Kairi?" He was surprised by how readily he answered her. It felt completely natural, her sitting there, between them. It didn't feel like intruding. Maybe it was a familiar pose. After all, they'd dragged her between them when she was nearly dead from alcohol poisoning. But he didn't think it was that, either. Maybe she was like a referee, or something, or at least...the person who made their relationship or whatever official. Because she knew and she liked it.

That was a lie. He was trying to like her, and sure, he did. He just didn't quite know what to make of Kairi. She had decided, much like Sora had decided, that she was their good friend now, all of a sudden. She just casually came up and asked how their summers had been. And Sora acted natural, so Riku did too.

"You're taking honors French too, right?"

"Yeah."

"Guess who our like, sort-of-TA is?"

Riku frowned. "Our what?" She shrugged.

"You know how for, like, chemistry, they made some of the upperclassmen with free periods come in to make sure we didn't blow stuff up? Like that, only for French," she said.

"So?"

"_C'est moi_!" Sora cried, and flopped himself over dramatically so he was lying across Kairi's lap and his face was near Riku's.

"Why?" Riku admitted he had a slightly harsh tone then.

Sora raised his eyebrows. "Well, I'm doing it instead of taking an English-learning course or another foreign language. Like, I had the option to do either, but I wanted to do this since it seemed like more fun and I might get to go on the France trip with the whole class over winter break." He wrinkled his nose and sat back up. "Why do they call it winter break? It doesn't snow."

Riku absently put his hand on top of Sora's head and watched the stream of cars in front of the school building. "They have to call it something."

"It _is _winter break," Kairi was saying, "Just because it doesn't snow doesn't mean it isn't _winter_."

* * *

They had history together, this year, even though history was a joke. Riku already knew he didn't want anything to do with history once he got to college, so didn't bother taking an AP.

He slid into a chair, dumping his backpack underneath the desk. He sort of despised how the rooms were all built exactly the same. On _this_ side of the building they face _this _direction with _this_ configuration of desks, the whiteboard goes _here_. It was horrible, because it was just like Dr. Zexion's cell bio room, but with different posters on the wall. It was just lame.

He had even subconsciously chosen the exact same seat he'd been assigned to last year.

And Sora had - perhaps, also, subconsciously - sat down next to him.

"Hey," Riku said to his boyfriend (though still, he shuddered to think the word because it was...so _high school_), and Sora glanced up at him and smiled, scooted his chair a little closer.

"What's up," he said dully.

Riku shrugged. "Just had English, you?"

Sora didn't reply. He stared at the white clock with square black numbers, mounted on the wall, and rested his chin on his hand. Riku watched it too. The second hand was so odd, compared to non-school clocks. For one, it went in a steady circle instead of jumping, or ticking. And it was the red hand. Riku wondered why the second hand was red and everything else was black. It emphasized, almost, the slowest part. You waited all that time and only a minute passed.

"Somebody just committed suicide just now," Sora said. "Somewhere."

"Sora?"

"I'm fine." He rested his chin on the desk, flanked by his arms, and closed his eyes. Kids shuffled in around them. "Statistically it was a teenager. A gay one. Since like ten percent of gay teenagers try."

"...Sora - "

"It's been a weird day, Riku. I just want to go home. Okay?" He opened his eyes and slid them over to Riku's face and winced. "Oh," was what Riku said to him.

That's what he said. _"Oh."_

God, he was so fucking _useless_.

"Roxas tried to run away from home," Sora said. "For a couple of hours. He told me. He didn't get lost."

"Sorry," Riku said, because he was a stupid ass.

"'S no big deal," Sora sighed and sat up. "He snuck into a circus trailer, can you believe it?" Sora snickered. "He thought if he got far away enough he wouldn't get caught. But he told me he chickened out and got off."

Riku glanced at the clock, then at their teacher. She was arranging something on her desk. "That's good," Riku said, "He probably could have gotten into trouble if he hadn't gone back." Sora frowned at him then, the way he'd frowned at him that one night in summer.

"You think so?" Sora said. "I guess..." He leaned back and folded his hands over his belly and watched the teacher start to write on the whiteboard in blue expo marker. He sighed. "I'm missing school tomorrow."

"Why?"

"I have to go to the doctor's office or wherever to get my hand checked up," he said, which to Riku didn't seem like a good enough reason for missing a _whole_ day of school, "and I have to take some test to check if I have OCD."

"You do? Why do you have to take one of those?"

Sora shrugged. "I've got no idea." He pressed a hand to the top of his head. "I don't think anyone with my hair could have OCD without going crazy."

Riku laughed, "Yeah," and then read the words written on the board. The teacher was just finishing up, and she dotted the sentence with a period and a flourish:

_"Nothing ever goes away."_

She stood to face the class and tapped the back of one knuckle against the whiteboard. "Okay, guys," she said, "I don't expect you to know where or what this is from, but I want you to keep this is mind all year, okay? It's important when you study history to know that we study it for a _reason _- " and launched into a speech Riku had heard twice before from different people, different years. It was dull. But he looked at the words written on the whiteboard, like reading the same passage in a textbook over and over because it isn't sinking in. Nothing ever goes away, nothing ever goes away, what does that mean? Well, he knew what it _meant_, of course, on a literal level. History is still relevant today, blah blah blah.

Was that a good thing? It probably meant some cheesy Disney motto like "even when people are gone, they're still in our hearts" or something. Or maybe it meant that the past always catches up to people, nobody can run away - ? And was a bad thing.

Maybe it meant both, Hell if he knew. Either way, it was at odds with the "change is the only constant" bull that seemed popular to spew around now. He didn't get it. Maybe there was nothing to get.

But he wrote it down on the inside flap of his binder, all the same, and circled it.

* * *

He kept thinking about Sora when he went home, and how funny it would be if it turned out the kid _did _have OCD. Of all of the stupid problems he could have. Of all the goddamn things that ought to be wrong with him, stress or anger or paranoia or depression, which he didn't have but ought to, if he had _OCD_ of all things. Riku doubted he did, though.

He went into his room and closed the door, and dropped his bag, and climbed on all fours onto his bed. He crawled forward until he could look out the window at the foot of the bed, pulled aside a curtain which was just for show anyways, and looked at the side of the street that had the short end of the stick. Some twelve-year-old kid went by, getting dragged by her gigantic dog towards a car or a bush or something.

Riku groaned and hopped off the bed, going over to turn on his computer. He waited for it to boot up and pulled his cellphone out of his pocket, instinctively checking it for updates, even though there never were any. He hardly ever used it.

He opened an internet browser on his computer and sat down at his desk, and stared at the search bar and the line just inside of it on the left which blinked at him insistently. On off. On off. On off, on. Like it was buzzing.

After a while, and without even knowing why, he typed:

.

am i even really alive?

.

He didn't hit enter for a long time. First he sat there, and looked at what he'd written, and wondered why'd he'd written it, because he wasn't really thinking about it at the time. Sora was so full of answers. He just had a stupid question. Answer me this. Please. And the text bar blinked at the end of the sentence, reminding him how easily he could delete it.

He hit enter and winced before looking at the results, knowing full well what he'd find already.

_Why **am I alive**? - Psychic and Medium Experiences_

_Michael Jackson is **really alive** - LiveTime Teen Forums_

_Why **am I even alive**? I never should have been born - Yahoo! Answers_

_2pac is **really alive**..autospy photo is a FAKE!! - Message Boards_

Riku turned off the monitor and closed his eyes. He kicked the wall, _SLAM!_, as hard as he could, and waited for things on the desk to stop shaking.

Why, _why, **why**, _people only ever asked _**WHY**_, they never asked **_if_**! Not ever! Like it wasn't even a question. He dug a hand into his hair and landed his elbow on the desk. It felt like all of his limbs were buzzing.

He was so sick of himself. And he just...wanted to see Sora, who would have answered him, even if it was with something stupid. He needed something to make himself feel safe again. They always said that the problem with an open mind was that people insisted on coming along and putting things in it. And now he was sitting here typing shit into a computer even though he knew it would only spew detritus back at him.

He picked up his phone again and flipped it open. No new messages. He punched a few numbers in and stared at it for a second before hitting send.

_"Hello?"_

"Hey, it's me."

_"Sup, Riks?"_

He didn't even seem surprised to be getting the phone call or anything. Even though Riku almost never called _anyone_, ever, because he didn't need to. Didn't want to. Liked his privacy. But Riku just needed something.

"I don't know, nothing."

_"Pff. You would never call for no reason."_

"I just did."

_"Riku? Are you alright?" _Sora sounded worried.

Riku thought about that. No, not really, but it would pass. It always did. He couldn't have been the first person ever to get sick of something, or to get lonely.

"Fine," Riku said, "It's been a weird day."

Sora's laughter sounded purely like static over the phone. _"Oh, very clever. Hahaha. I'm sorry I acted all weird in history. But hey, me acting weird is not really that unusual anymore, huh?"_ Riku laughed halfheartedly and yawned.

_"But yeah, sorry about that. Are we cool?"_

"Yeah, sure. Sora?"

_"What?"_

"...nothing. Call me after you've been diagnosed with severe crazy at the hospital."

_"I will. I promise. -- oh, I gotta go, Belle's calling me for something. Love you, bye!"_

Riku paused. "Ah," he said, "Yeah, me too, bye," and hung up really quickly.

* * *

And the next day, Sora sat on the bed and Riku leaned up against it and Sora wrapped his arms around Riku's shoulders.

"So?" Riku said, "Are you officially diagnosed with anything?"

Sora hugged him and bumped his forehead against his cheek, "Nope." He giggled and sat up again and started to play with Riku's hair. It wasn't so much playing as it was systematic pulling, really. "Well, yeah. They said I had really, really minor OCD, maybe, but that it's not enough to bother doing anything about, so they won't."

"Oh," Riku said, "That's good."

"Hm," Sora grunted noncommittally and pulled a notebook out of his backpack. He opened it to a blank page and looked at it for a good few seconds. He didn't really pay attention to the paper, of course. It was rare that he went to Riku's house. It wasn't that Riku didn't let him come, or anything, it was just that it was usually Sora who did the inviting. And you can't invite yourself over to someone else's house.

So he rolled onto his back and thought to himself, _I am lying down on Riku's bed, and it's really soft._ And after a minute, _Mm, it smells like Riku, kinda. Didn't I have to talk to him about something...?_

"Oh!" he sat up and poked his boyfriend in the back. Riku jolted and then swiveled his head around to look at Sora. The way he looked at people had really barely changed at all. It was still like sharp, like dead. "I have a question for you."

"Mm?"

Sora took a breath. "Do you want to meet Roxas?"

Riku blinked at him, was silent, and then spoke. "Why do you ask?"

Wow, that was such a Riku thing to ask. 'Depends on if you're offering, Sora, jeez.' Well, whatever. He was Riku. You can't get cats to swim.

"Well, for the France trip. I got home today and he called me and I was kind of thinking I could get him to fly over from England for winter break, and he says he might be able to if he can get somebody to come with him! And he has somebody he can ask, apparently, like a real adult. 'Member that Axel guy I told you about?"

Riku did more than remember, he'd seen the pictures in the email.

_"Oh my GOD," Sora had said, and spun around in his chair to stare at Riku. "Is it possible that Reno has like, a twin he was separated from at birth, or like a secret clone!?"_

_"What?"_

_"C'mere, look at this picture Rox sent me."_

_Riku did. It was of a sort of Sora, a sort of Kairi, and a sort of Reno._

_A blond boy with Sora's face and different eyes sat on a tree branch next to a girl with black hair and Kairi's face and a man with spiky red hair and Reno's face._

_"The blond kid, he's your little brother?" Riku had said eventually. _

_"Yeah," Sora had said, "Roxas."_

_"That I get," Riku had muttered, "But that guy looks freakishly like Reno."_

_"Yeah. That's what's creeping me out. But I don't think he's related at all."_

_But Riku had not been paying attention; he'd been staring at that Roxas guy. It seemed...wrong. Having Sora's face. It was like the whole picture, everything in it, was off; something somewhere had been misplaced and somebody took a picture of it. Like there were two Soras, and they were completely different people._

_It had taken Riku almost a week to realize what disturbed him about it. That Sora really did have a little brother. That he had a life outside of Destiny Island, always would, and would probably always cling to it. And Riku? He had nothing. He was the kid who grew up on the island and had never left the archipelago, didn't play any instruments, didn't really have any interests, didn't play sports, hated people. And he had no secret brothers hidden in circuses halfway across the world. He was plain old Riku and Sora was shiny-new-Sora. Riku could be summed up in a sentence, on the dry half of the island. And dammit, Riku was the dry half of the island and it seemed like Sora was everything else._

"Yes," Riku said, "I remember him. Reno's look-alike, right?"

"Yeah, since he works at a circus, he doesn't do anything during the off-months, and that includes like, basically all of winter. Like, he has to train and stuff, but he can prolly get out of it for a week, Roxas says." Sora beamed. "So? You wanna meet my little brother, don't you? I bet he wants to meet you more than anything."

Riku shrugged and zipped up a pocket of his backpack. "What makes you say that?" Although he remembered the conversation he'd heard on the phone when he was half-asleep. He wondered what Sora had said about him when he couldn't hear.

"Well, he knows you're my friend, and he knows that I'm..." Sora trailed off, "And he's not dumb, so he's probably figured...it's just, you know, I think he'd like you. He's a quiet guy, too, sort of."

Riku shrugged, and nodded. "Okay," he said, because winter still seemed a good few months off. And when you were a teenager, that was ages. It was six term papers, ten labs, fourteen essays, forty quizzes and twenty-five tests away. It was practically forever. It was like being in the beginning of summer and not even being able to imagine school starting again.

Sora didn't do anything except shrug and go back to whatever was on the bed that was so interesting. After a minute or two, he turned to look at Riku again, and said, "I'm going to hug you now, _okay_?"

"Mm, mmf," Riku grunted.

Sora rolled his eyes and wrapped his arms around Riku's neck from behind and squeezed gently. He kissed Riku on the ear. "Thank you for not being dead," Sora told him, "And also thank you in advance for getting to a ridiculously old age, like maybe triple-digits, and being one of those cranky wrinkly guys that yells at little kids whose bouncy balls land on his lawn."

"Are you done?"

Sora thought about it. "And for constantly talking about the 'good old days' and how everything sucks and that you miss nostalgia. I think that's it."

Riku sighed and turned his head to look at Sora, who grinned at him. "You're a weird kid," he said, "You know that? You're a really weird guy."

Sora kissed him full on the mouth, and Riku felt his cheeks get hot, and he thought about his mom being right down stairs. "Yep," Sora said, "Roxas says that too. I can't wait until you meet him."

Riku could.

* * *

A/N: I love how the entirety of this chapter can be summed up in "It's senior year, they're still dating, oh and Roxas is gonna show up eventually."

Other than that. Please tell me, honestly, if you thought this was entirely useless. I know what I meant by it, but that doesn't mean my intentions are clear to people who don't live in my head 24/7. So thoughts are really heavily appreciated, as is constructive criticism or, really, anything else you have to say.

I drew a koi on my cellphone (...cellphone...) but it's in pencil and I don't have any pointy black sharpies. This is a tragedy. I don't even like koi that much; I keep trops. I just like the idea of drawing on things that we put on such a pedestal as clean, perfect devices. And then it's like "no wait, I drew a cartoon with bat wings on the back of my iPod. Take that Apple. Hit you right in the minimalism."


	13. Inside Me Is a Place Where I Live Alone

* * *

**And That's Where You Renew Your Springs that Never Dry Up.**

* * *

A/N: (Wow, I felt a little pervy writing this chapter even though like nothing sexual happens.)

Um, does it go question-mark-exclamation-point or exclamation-point-question-mark? When you're putting emphasis on a question. (i.e. "What are you doing to that hamster?!" vs. "What are you doing to that hamster!?") I had thought it was the latter, but very few people do it that way...it just seems more final to me, or something. Like the question mark is a close-parentheses.

...by the way, what _are_ you doing to that hamster?

* * *

"Let us make one point, that we meet each other with a smile, when it is difficult to smile. Smile at each other, make time for each other in your family."**  
- Mother Teresa**

* * *

Riku shifted uncomfortably in front of the Cinnabon stand. There was something hideous and unnerving about an airport. It was an open space, and you couldn't tell what the walls were made of besides "speckled grey something". And the windows were too high up, and too big, and let in too much light. He couldn't help but feel like it was a really good place for a bird to get stuck and die trying to ram its way out.

He hated watching people walk by, heads bowed, muttering into cellphones and dragging luggage in and out. He knew they were silly, the things he was thinking. An airport was about going from one place to another place, it wasn't for fun, and people had just gotten off of red-eye flights or had woken at five in the morning to be here on time, or something. But he couldn't help what his brain was doing.

_Useless people, cranky for no reason, won't even make eye contact with each other or anything. What makes the whole world so unfriendly?_

He kept thinking these things, even though he knew he looked pretty unfriendly, even though he _was_ pretty unfriendly, even though all these people were not at their best anyways. Everybody was tired and cranky at an airport. You were...allowed to be. Riku was tired and cranky all the time. Oh well. At least he _knew _that now.

He pulled out one of the white plastic chairs from under one of the white plastic tables and sat down, propping his chin on his hand and watching Sora and Kairi order food. Maybe he should have said yes when they asked if he wanted something, it was an eight-hour flight and he didn't like peanuts very much. But they probably fed you real food on the plane.

He yawned and fingered the zipper on his vest absently. It was weird. It was - what? - maybe sixty-five, seventy degrees Fahrenheit here, and apparently when they landed it was supposed to be ten degrees and maybe snowing. Riku had never _been_ in a place that was ten degrees and snowing. And he remembered wondering, a while ago, if snow really did look the way it did in movies, all pretty and magical and covering everything evenly. He doubted it. Sunsets in movies were always pretty, and they were in real life, too, but not much else was. Not ever. People in movies went from ugly antisocial pigs to pretty popular queens in a montage. People didn't _do_ that where Riku was.

Maybe they did it in other places. Hell if he knew anything. Sometimes he felt like he didn't know a fucking _thing_.

Kairi and Sora were still waiting for there order to be given to them, standing in front of the food stand and chatting easily. Sora said something, started giggling, and Kairi stuck her tongue out and crossed her arms. The happy cheerful couple, right? Sure. Riku didn't care, he just didn't really care any more. He didn't know why they put up with him. And honestly, he was pretty sure that if Sora wasn't...the way he was, he'd be dating Kairi like there was no tomorrow.

Maybe.

Riku didn't really know. He was tired, and he was thinking depressing things mostly for the sake of it. He had had to buy a jacket, with long sleeves and a wool lining and everything, and he had it in his carry-on bag, and it seemed ridiculous to have that with him but...oh well. He smiled when Kairi and Sora came back with a tray of sodas and fries and something that was probably either a cake or a pastry or...something.

"Hey," Sora said, sitting down. The plastic chair scraped against the clean white airport tiles. "I know you said you didn't want anything, but it occurred to me that you'd say that even if you _did_ want something, anyways, so we got you soda and I'm gonna jam some fries down your throat."

Riku just stared at Sora blankly until Kairi nudged him with her foot.

"Aw," she said distinctly, "Isn't that _really sweet_ of your _boyfriend_, Riku? Huh?" She kicked him in the ankle.

"Ow! You two are psychotic!" he muttered, pulling his feet back and hooking them around the legs of the chair. He planted his elbows on the table and moodily watched Sora screw the cap off of a soda bottle and take a drink. He didn't really like soda, it made his nose itch. Riku shrugged, yawned again and looked at the window. And it's another bright and sunny day on Destiny Island, just like it was yesterday, just like it'll be tomorrow and it's a _great_ day to get outside and play with the kids! Just like every day!

"Okay," Kairi took her phone out of her purse and flipped it open. "I think the flight leaves in like, a little over an hour, but I'm gonna go check with one of the teachers now. Back in five," she flipped her cellphone closed and scooted out of her chair.

Riku watched her go. She was wearing a miniskirt and a tanktop. He was pretty sure - he wasn't totally sure, but he was pretty sure - that that was a really bad idea. Sure, it was fine when you were on the island. But his mom had checked the weather reports, and it was supposed to be ten degrees and maybe snowing in Annecy by the time they landed.

Sora was wearing pants and a long-sleeved t shirt, which, to Riku, seemed a lot more sensible. Plus, Sora had actually _lived_ in France before. Riku was leaning towards thinking maybe Sora was the authority on the subject. Kairi had been wearing flip-flops. Sora was wearing sneakers.

"What?" Sora said, tilting his head to the side questioningly. "What is it?"

"Huh?" Riku met his eyes.

"You were looking at me funny," Sora said.

"Oh, ah, no. Just...spacing out." Riku shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. "It still feels weird."

"What does?"

"My hair." Every time he brushed hair out of his face or combed through it absently, it stopped before he expected it to. He'd gotten it cut a few days ago on a sort of a whim. That and, well, he was sick of looking like a gay pirate. Of course, it still reached to just barely past his shoulders (instead of a good few inches), but any shorter and he wouldn't have been able to put it into a ponytail. And he didn't think he could handle a buzz cut.

Sora shrugged, "I like it short," he said, smiling. Riku rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, resting his arms on the armrests. Sora leaned out to touch the hair on the back of his neck. "I dunno, makes you look more mature," he told Riku.

Snort. "You're one to talk."

Sora stuck his tongue out. "It's not my fault! I had a brief dreadlock phase when I was fifteen and they just...never came fully undone. And...Roxas copied me."

Riku started laughing when he said that. "Tch," Sora muttered, "Shut up, idiot." And he leaned in and kissed Riku on the mouth.

Sometimes, when Sora was kissing him, Riku found it kind of really hard to think, and especially hard to think full sentences. Or coherently. But only sometimes. It was starting to happen more often, from practice or something, Riku figured. Or when Sora did the swirly thing with his tongue which tickled. Whatever it was, it was getting really distracting.

He didn't let that happen this time. He pulled away from Sora almost immediately, glanced at the stream of people walking by past the food stands. Heads bowed, muttering into cellphones, no gawking. That he saw, anyways. Maybe it was because there were teenagers everywhere right now.

Which was another thing.

God _dammit_, Sora!

"Idiot," he muttered, "We're in public."

Sora snorted and giggled. "The public can close their eyes!" Riku pinched his lips together and pushed his carry-on bag underneath his chair with his foot. He kept looking for people gawking at them. _"A boy just kissed another boy! Oh my **gosh**, are they **gays**?!"_ He rubbed his mouth on his sleeve. He felt bad for doing it, but it shouldn't be news to Sora.

Speaking of whom, Sora was looking at him with sad eyes again. "I'm sorry," Riku muttered.

"It's fine," Sora said earnestly, "I don't mind, I just wish you wouldn't get so freaked out about it."

Riku sighed. "Yeah, I'm sure I'll get over it," he said.

"_Oh_ my God, you guys," Kairi jogged the remaining few meters to the table, "I leave for - " she checked her phone, " - three and a half minutes and you start trying to eat Riku's face?" She sat down and glared at Sora.

Sora smiled at her, scooted his chair closer to Riku and leaned on his shoulder in a sarcastic display of affection. After a time he stared blankly down at the table. "You know an expression I don't understand?"

Neither of them said anything. So, Sora gave up and just told them.

"Creamy skin," he said, poking Riku's arm. "How is that sexy at _all_? Comparing your skin to cream. Like 'Wow, your skin's so pretty it looks like it got squirted out of a cow's udder!' How does that make sense?" He picked up a plastic fork and started to pick apart the pastry on the tray experimentally.

"I don't think that people usually associate cream with cows," Kairi was saying, "Just that cream is sort of like...sweet, and like...just one color? I dunno. Like," she thought about it for a second, "Cream is probably sexier than cheese. Like if I said 'You've got cheesy skin,' that would probably be an insult."

"Insulting _what_, I don't know," Riku added and then fell silent. He stared moodily at the soda. Goddamn. Of course she'd have a counterargument. Of course she'd have something to say back. Riku was the only person in the world who couldn't come up with instant replies. Maybe he was just a really slow thinker. Maybe he was stupid. Whatever.

* * *

Coach seats were about as fun as a parasite, Riku decided, when the person in front of you insisted on reclining their chair all the way back. He hadn't been on a plane in such a long time, though, he was finding it hard to focus on anything else. He was careful with the seat belt, and he tightened it snugly against his lap.

He had an aisle seat. He knew that was a good thing, since it meant easy access to the bathroom and to food, or whatever, but he couldn't help thinking it was unfair Sora got a window seat. Kairi sat between them, she was probably worst off, but still. Sora had probably been on a plane more times than he had fingers. Why was he the one who got to leave his fingerprints on the glass?

Riku blinked a little harder. Their plane left at nine o'clock, sharp, which for some reason meant you were supposed to show up at the airplane at seven in the morning. Riku lived pretty far away from it, though. He was tired.

That wasn't saying much. He felt like he'd been tired for about a million years. He couldn't remember being not tired since before high school started in freshman year.

He sighed and rubbed his eye. He glanced at Kairi, who was still fiddling with her seat belt. She kept tugging on the strap to pull it further through the loop without much success.

"Here," Riku leaned over and gave the strap a strong pull. It tightened against her stomach. He sat up again and checked that his own belt hadn't come undone; he sneezed. The padded pleather seats were not really making up for the stale airplane smell. They had tiny televisions on the backs of the seats in front of them and those crappy static headphones wrapped in plastic and resting against the arm of each chair.

"Thanks," Kairi said. She laughed. "Wow, that would have been so awkward if it was like, anybody else!" she said.

Riku didn't really know what she meant by that, so he laughed quietly and nodded, then turned back to his carry-on bag. He considered taking his mp3 out but he didn't know if that counted as an electronic device that would mess up the plane's signals or whatever. He was pretty sure it wasn't, but he didn't want to risk it yet.

"Phoo," Sora said, two seats over. He had buckled his seat belt, but he'd left it loose enough to probably fit another person on top of his lap. He was kneeling on the seat, hands pressed against the glass of the tiny window. He breathed onto it, "_Haa,_" and rubbed his sleeve in tiny circles to clear it up. "It's all scratched!"

"Sora, it's gonna be mostly a boring view of clouds the whole time, anyways," Riku said, turning the tiny television on experimentally. It was only maybe five or six inches wide. He didn't know about when they took off, but while they were grounded on the tarmac, he couldn't do anything but look at a little map of Destiny Island and a dotted red line leading to eastern France. There was a comically large plane icon on the Destiny Island end of the line.

"I like clouds," Sora was saying, "I know a guy named Cloud. He's a real nice guy, or was, last time I saw him."

Kairi made a face at him. "Sora, nobody is named _Cloud_. Either his parents are hippies or that's a stripper name."

Sora turned around and planted his ass in the seat again to stare at Kairi blankly. His eyes flicked to Riku. "I don't know what that word means," he deadpanned. Kairi started laughing again.

(It didn't really take that much to make Kairi laugh, Riku was learning, but he kind of didn't mind her anyways.)

"Ri-_ku_! What's that _mean_?" Sora whined.

Riku tried pushing some of the buttons next to the TV screen. A bar showed up when he hit the volume, and he played around with making it longer and shorter. It didn't make any sound, though; he didn't have the earphones plugged in.

"You know, Sora," he said, "I'll, uh, explain it to you when...uh, in private."

It was funny. That was probably the first time in a few weeks at least that Sora hadn't known what an English word meant. It reminded Riku of that first day, that first word, Am-big-you-us. Am-big-you-us, are you and we big? He didn't know, it was a weird string of words. Ambiguous. It almost sounded like a sentence when you said it like that.

Riku wondered if Sora would bother putting the definition of "stripper" down in his little French-English dictionary. Oh, Hell, he hoped not.

When they finally took off, Riku felt like his ears were about to pop, but he couldn't even look outside and watch the plane leave the ground without craning his neck and making it worse. It was probably the first time he'd left the island since he was ten. Sora was staring out at the ground, though, probably thinking of the last plane he was on.

The plane stopped climbing eventually, and when it did, you were allowed to start changing channels and things. Riku plugged in the terrible fuzzy earphones and started to watch a cooking show.

* * *

Kairi was starting to hate sitting still. Or, really, she was starting to hate it _more_ than she did before. They must have crossed a date line or something, because it was totally dark outside, and most of the people on the plane were asleep.

She went on long plane rides at least twice a year, to and from Japan with her family (oh, wasn't _that_ fun this year, right after the alcohol poisoning deal), but she usually didn't have to sit in the middle. Usually that was one of her parents. And they could fall asleep on each other's shoulders.

Oh, well. It was still pretty cool, the idea of going on a whole big trip to Europe. Ten days! Ten, Kairi mused sleepily, was a lot of days. It was three days more than a week.

Hm-mm. She looked around. Sora and Riku looked like they were basically asleep. Sora was leaning against the window awkwardly; Riku just looked like he was sitting with his eyes closed.

She felt a little bit dizzy, like something had come loose in the back of her skull and her brain was floating around in her head. Probably just motion sickness or something. Or scent-sickness, God, wasn't there some way of getting rid of the puke-and-sweat smell on this thing? Yeock.

She could see, in front of her between the seats, one person was still watching a movie. She watched a pale man in nothing but black pants stride into the middle of a pentacle and sink his teeth into the neck of a young woman. Vampire flick. Great. And she had a perfect view from where she was sitting.

Well, whatever, it wasn't like she _had_ to look in that direction.

She leaned down and riffled through her bag. She felt the smooth plastic shape of a tube of mascara, some chapstick, her watch...it seemed like forever until she reached her book. She pulled it out.

She owned it, of course, but it was a hard-back, and she would have felt back dog-earing the pages. She flipped on the lights above her head and tried to remember the page she'd been on. It was somewhere around a hundred, maybe? Maybe a little further.

"What's that?" Riku's voice always surprised her, even now. He was so quiet, usually. Not shy quiet, really, just a sort of comfortable quiet.

"My book?" she asked, glancing up at him. She still sort of dreaded looking at Riku in the eyes. She held the book up so he could see, and he touched his fingers to the cover so he could hold it still.

"Cool," he said after a second, "Is it good?"

She nodded and smiled. "It's my third time reading it, but it's a travel book."

He looked at her again. "Travel book?" Gay or not, sexless or not, Riku Tepes talking to her on a plane in the middle of the night was a kind of surreal experience. She wondered what made him start up the conversation. Maybe he'd been faking sleep.

She shrugged at him, "I mean, since I already know the story, it's no big deal if I zone out for a little while while reading it, y'know? If I miss something this time around, I already know it. So I don't need to pay as much attention in case, like, I'm on a car or a train and I'm getting bumped around a lot."

He nodded once and rested his chin on his hand. His gaze lingered near the window, unsurprisingly.

It was a clear night. Or, above the clouds, it was, but Kairi supposed it was _always_ that way, right? She didn't know. She couldn't get rid of that floating-head feeling.

Nobody said anything for a very long time. The glare of the tacky vampire movie was a little distracting, and more than once Kairi found her eyes drifting towards it, but she inevitably ended up staring at the tiny window again.

After a while, "D'you think Sora's really asleep, or is he faking?" Kairi asked with a sort of giggle.

"Uh," Riku rested one hand on their shared arm rest and leaned over Kairi's lap for the second time in the plane ride. He looked at Sora. "Nope, he's all the way asleep."

"How can you tell?"

Riku sat up straighter and yawned like a lion, with his teeth showing. "He's doing that foot-twitchy thing. He doesn't know he does it, so he can't do it when he's faking sleep. He's like a dog having a dream about chasing bunnies."

Kairi tugged on her skirt a little to straighten it out and glanced at Sora's feet (he'd kicked his shoes off fifteen minutes into the air), curled up on the seat of the chair. Sure enough, one of them was periodically twitching a little, and so did his nose.

She glanced at Riku and grinned, then back at Sora. "Aw," she said mockingly.

"You say that now, but wait until he starts kicking," Riku said. "You're gonna have a bruise on your leg."

Kairi scooted in her seat a little further towards Riku's side. "He kicks?"

"Hard," he told her. "I told you, he's like a dog." She thought about Sora and Riku sleeping next to each other. She wouldn't be surprised if Riku never said anything about the kicking to Sora. He probably just lay there and rolled his eyes and suffered in silence, because he was just _like _that.

It really did make conversation kind of difficult, without Sora as a buffer, but she was sure he was a very nice person. He struck as the sort of person who tries very hard not to stand out in school, the type that were always secretly good at something. Besides, it was sort of refreshing to speak to someone like Riku! You never knew what he was going to say, since he didn't say much usually, or at least not to Kairi.

She didn't want to think about passing out and leaning half her weight on his shoulders. She didn't want to remember that at _all_, the whole experience of that night. Her parents had barely agreed to let her come on this trip. Her uncle, on her dad's side, was a recovering alcoholic; they were certain it ran rampant in the family. Maybe they were right, but Kiari wasn't stupid enough to go drinking herself into a stupor again! If she knew it might happen, she wasn't going to risk it.

But they had been convinced that if she, "a young teenage girl," went to Europe where they must drink and smoke and give wine to babies, that she would have no self control.

She was pretty sure, too, that they'd only agreed because she told them she was going to be there with the people who'd brought her to the hospital in the first place. Even then, they'd went and called up all the teachers on the trip and told them to "keep an eye on her".

She felt horrible enough as it was. The school guidance counselor giving her talks about all the kids he'd seen die or become disabled from drinking, the kids in jail or rehab for substance abuse, the "this is your brain on drugs and alcohol" pictures. It was like her own mini sex ed class. She resented that she was the only one getting crap for drinking when easily over half the kids there had been doing it.

She shook her head to clear it. It was easy to get sucked into the pit of anger regarding last May; best to avoid it until it became a tale of the past.

Thinking to strike up a conversation, she turned to look at Riku, a question about where they were staying on her lips. Neutral ground.

He was asleep again, or pretending to be, his head lolling to the side and his eyes closed. His breathing was deep and even, and he made a little nasal noise that wasn't quite a snore.

Kairi gave up and turned off her overhead light. Plugging the earphone jack into its slot on her seat, she decided she may as well catch the rest of that horrible vampire flick that the person in front of her was watching. They still had two more hours to go.

* * *

Sora never really fell asleep on planes, or cars, or boats.

Well, he did, but it wasn't really sleep?

Like his eyes were closed and he wasn't really conscious but he could open his eyes if he needed to?

It was like dunking your brain in a cloud. He was basically asleep, but when he heard someone say his name in passing he pulled himself out of it. His forehead was pressed up against the window, which was cold and clammy, and he'd curled up on the chair. He didn't turn around. Kairi and Riku were talking, a little bit, but Sora just didn't feel like it.

Almosttherealmosttherealmostthere. He liked English, sure, it was a nice language. But going back to his country, even if it was the wrong end of it, to a place where he didn't have to guess at the meanings of casual slang or make that annoying "th" sound. To be in a place where _he_ was the one who knew what was going on, and his classmates didn't. He knew that sounded kind of mean, which he didn't mean to do. But it was like he'd gone on an English binge for a year and he'd been letting his other language slip, really slowly, or get bottled up.

Roxas was supposed to get there two days from now. Sora wondered where they were gonna sleep. The class (which was only about thirty people) had arrangements to sleep in the unused dormitories of a boarding school while the students there were on Christmas break with their families. There were gonna be a couple of kids who were just hanging around since they lived too far away to bother going home, but the school had a couple of empty buildings, anyway.

Sora kind of doubted that they'd let Roxas and that Axel guy stay in them. Especially since Roxas's friend was like _twenty_-_one_.

What was up with that, anyways? He was glad his brother had a good friend, of course, but five or six years was a pretty big age gap when you were barely fifteen. And what did a twenty-one year old guy want with a fifteen year old boy?

Sora liked to believe the best in people. He really did. He wanted people to believe the best of him. But any normal person would question that scenario! Well, Roxas was mature for his age. He'd see.

He wondered if his little brother had gotten a decent grasp on the language yet. He hid it on the phone, sort of, but Sora knew what to listen for. It made Sora a little sad, but Roxas would probably be glad of it when he got older. It'd given him that sexy Frenchman vibe.

* * *

"He had occasional flashes of silence, that made his conversation perfectly delightful."  
- **Sydney Smith**

* * *

The plane landed just before it started snowing. Literally, _just_ before. They hadn't even been allowed to get off of the plane before it started, falling in big chunks, flakes stuck together.

So the first time Riku saw snow it was three seats in and through a tiny window.

The bus ride there they had to crowd in with a bunch of tourists, which meant three kids to every two seats, which worked out pretty well. One, two, three, Riku, Sora, Kairi. Riku didn't remember how it was that Kairi was just included with them all the time now, but she was.

Sora made good on his nine-month-old promise to sit on Riku's lap, and they took the window seat while Kairi sat next to them and threatened to take pictures with her camera phone. Riku would have preferred that Kairi sit on Sora's lap, or even Sora sit on Kairi's lap, because it was all good and funny to have the joke about a guy sitting on another guy's lap, but it hit a little too close to the mark for Riku's paranoid mind.

So yeah, the British tourists were looking at him a little weird, but after a few minutes he forgot. Blame it on the pachydermatous skin of perpetually ignoring everyone around him at school. You start to realize that people don't think about you as often as you think about people thinking about you.

Sora pulled Riku's hands up to latch around his waist as a sort of human seat belt. Riku let him. He was staring out the window.

For one thing, it was..._cold_. Everywhere. It was like walking into your refrigerator. And it was snowing, everywhere snowing, and snow was not as cold as ice when it landed on your face at first. It was like somebody was grating the clouds in the sky, or some cotton, or a bunch of flowers. So that the shreds fell down.

He'd seen snow in the movies a million times, but it was _different_ when it was _him_ seeing it. When he was the one who could feel it. He was that stupid guy in the fake suede coat with the wool lining on a bus in France watching the snow fall a few days before Christmas. He was that stupid guy in the movies. Well, Riku thought with some small satisfaction, at least I know _I_ won't get the girl in the end.

He leaned his head against the window and watched his breath condense on the glass. On the other side, the snow had melted back into water on the window. It was a fine mist with a few droplets running down the side, like tiny, warm snowballs. They collected the beads of water in front of them and tracked down the surface of the glass, leaving behind a smooth trail of wet. Water snails. Sometimes, if there weren't enough beads in front of it, it would stop where it was until enough collected for it to keep moving. He watched one, in particular, as it tracked downwards. And he knew it was silly, but goddamn if he wasn't rooting for the little thing. It haltingly made its way to the lower seam of the window.

He shifted his focus to the mountains in the distance. The snow-capped mountains. The not-a-rain-shadow mountains. They were beautiful, too, even if he could see the stark black lines of a ski lift on one of them.

It was cold, and pretty, but not too cold.

It was true what the movies did with snow. Not the way it fell, unless it didn't always fall in big chunks, but the way it stuck to things. He thought so, anyways. It covered everything, thick and white, like other color was just an extra or an accent. Everything was perfect, and even, and purposeful. It was hard to believe nature just did it by accident.

He stretched his neck to try and see further down one of the side streets (the wool lining on the lapels of his jacket scratched the base of his throat) and ended up resting his chin on Sora's shoulder to do so. He saw a building that could've been a gingerbread house.

There were hardly any people on the streets at all, but he supposed that made sense. To him it felt like five in the evening but to these people it was something like eleven or twelve at night, wasn't it?

He watched the snow catch the orange street lights as it fell. He wondered from how far up the snow fell. Did it snow on the very top of that mountain? He hoped so, it was such a beautiful mountain, it deserved the snow.

He blinked. Did he really just think that? Oh well.

He sighed. "Wow," he breathed to himself when the bus passed by a gap in two buildings and gave him a great view of some snow-covered hills.

Sora jerked in his lap, "Jeez!" and started laughing.

"What?" Riku asked, his attention snapping back into place.

Sora wiggled around a little to face him and stuck his tongue out. "You were all quiet and sleepy and leaning on my shoulder, but all of a sudden I get this weird breathy _'Wooooow'_ right in my ear."

Riku rolled his eyes and shifted. His jacket squeaked against the back of the chair. "I didn't sound like _that_."

Sora laughed and shook his head, which made his hair swing back and forth for a second or two. He turned back around, leaned into Riku, and stared around the inside of the bus.

"I love how all the people on the bus are staring at Riku shamelessly," he said with some small satisfaction, looking at Kairi. Kairi nodded and adjusted her purse on her lap.

(Riku knew it, she was cold in her skirt.)

Riku groaned, "That's because I've got a _boy_ sitting on my _lap_, Sora," he muttered quietly. He wasn't stupid. It wasn't like he didn't think there were homophobes. He just hoped that for now, there weren't any brave ones around. His eyes flickered to the other people on the bus. It was true, though not very true, that people were sort of sneaking glances at him. Nobody was really _staring_. Probably wondering about the _gay _boys.

"I don't think it's that," Kairi said, crossing her legs. "You aren't the only two who have to couple up like that. Look," she pointed to two other pairs of boys sitting on boys' laps, from their own class. Riku recognized them, sort of, or enough to know that they were friends. Maybe people thought Sora and Riku were just friends. Maybe.

"Yeah," Sora said, "It's 'cause of your hair, dummy."

Riku wrinkled his nose at that. That was just _dumb_. He'd gotten a haircut, sure, but it didn't look _that_ weird. And it wasn't like these people knew what he looked like before he'd gotten a haircut. Jeez, Sora.

Sora laughed at the face Riku made. "It's white! Didn't it occur to you that that's kind of...I dunno, _weird_ for a seventeen-year-old guy?"

"What?" What was Sora talking about? People on Destiny Islands sometimes were born with white hair. It just happened. Destiny Island wasn't that obscure, was it? Surely people knew things like that? It wasn't...no. Was it?

Sora rested his forehead on the window. He exhaled, _haa_, and a patch of fog formed on the glass. "You're being silly," he said quietly. He closed one eye and stared at his shrinking patch of fog, then drew the outline of the mountain he could see through it. He breathed on it again to make it bigger and wrote, underneath the fingerprint-smudge mountain with his pinky, _Sora était ici._ Sora was here. He dotted the last i with a flourish.

"Yeah," Riku agreed with him and put his sleepy head back on Sora's shoulder. He closed his eyes.

The snow would be there tomorrow.

Kairi didn't say anything, and neither did Sora, and Riku spaced out. He let his mind go wandering with whatever thoughts it found, because Hell, if it found something interesting to run with, it needed the exercise. Goddamn, that sentence didn't even make one kind of sense.

Sora smelled like dirt and vegetables and being on a farm in the fall after it rained. Riku didn't know how to think about it. It was clean, sort of, but it wasn't a soap smell or a shampoo smell at all. Maybe it was just a skin smell. He just felt sleepy.

Who cared if people looked at him funny. He was sleepy and the snow would be there tomorrow.

He almost laughed out loud when he heard Sora talking through the fuzz of his subconscious, when he heard Sora remark casually to Kairi, "You know what I like about people so much?" And Kairi made a noise in the negative. "How we're all so different but we're also so exactly the same. You know?"

On a bus in France wearing a new coat with a boyfriend on a lap in the middle of the night with the snow and a pretty girl with red hair and big eyes. Sora was a bit of an observant asshole, but Riku wasn't, so that was okay.

* * *

"I've always found paranoia to be a perfectly defensible position."**  
- Pat Conroy****

* * *

**

It turned out that there were two people to a room at the dormitories. They probably could have fit three or four if people were willing to share beds, but they'd been given an entire dormitory building (of the three) which meant three floors and almost twenty-five rooms with two beds each.

There were more boys than girls, so the girls got the first floor and the boys got the top two, which was fine by them.

It was midnight and boys were running down the halls attacking each other with pillows and shouting "your mom" jokes at each other. The rooms echoed with shrieks of laughter; you couldn't get away from it.

"Zack! Give me back my phone!"

"Psh! I shall not, foolish slave! You should be honored that the king of Romania is even bothering to use your puny technology!"

"Romania doesn't have a _monarchy_, dipshit!"

"It fucking does now!"

Riku rolled his eyes and tugged a pillowcase over the pillow on his bed. He agreed with the general consensus. Teenage boys were useless and immature. He hated that he was one of them, but the good news was that wouldn't last long. Three years until he was twenty, right? Like that would make any difference.

It smelled slightly of cinnamon and wet clay everywhere you went in the dormitory. It was a vague smell and went away after you'd smelled it for about ten minutes, though.

Sora wasn't putting the sheets on his bed. He was leaning against the closed door, smiling lazily, staring out the one paned window in the room. It was a view of the inner courtyard, which meant a tiny field with a little poured concrete path and another dorm building across from it. But covered in snow, it looked pretty.

Riku crawled onto the mattress on all fours, which made it bounce a bit, and tucked the upper two corners of the sheet in. He turned around and did the same to the bottom two corners, stretching the elastic over the round edges and pulling his hand away with a satisfying snap sound.

He yawned again and flopped back onto the bed, twisting a finger in his hair absently. His body said it was maybe seven or eight o'clock, but here it was past midnight. It wouldn't be bad to fall asleep now, might help him get over jet lag or something.

It occurred to him that maybe Sora wasn't making his bed because he planned to sleep in Riku's bed with him. Riku was pretty sure that that was a really bad idea. For one thing, in the morning they were probably going to be woken up by a teacher. Maybe two boys sharing a bed wasn't that weird, if it was a sleepover or something and someone forgot a sleeping bag, but when there was another perfectly good bed three feet away? For one thing, they'd probably be forced to go to different rooms, and for another thing, people would ask _why_.

"Sora, you should make your bed soon," he said out loud.

"Huh?" said Sora. He blinked and looked down at Riku then back out the window, walking forward to lean against the window sill. "Oh, yeah," he muttered, "Yeah, I will. Soon, just in a little while." He smiled at the outside.

"Hey Riku?"

"Yeah."

Sora came and hopped up on his bed, bouncing a little. "We're in France!"

"I noticed."

Sora stopped bouncing and kneeled on the bed, looking sideways at the window again, still snowing. What was so interesting out there that he had to keep looking for it? "I missed it," Sora said very quietly. "I missed most of it. I found out we had to move a few days before Christmas, you know."

Riku watched him from where he was on the bed and felt vaguely nostalgic. Snow gave everything a different light. It wasn't the no-light-blue-light of early morning or the blind black of the night or the yellow of summer on the rooftop of a stucco house. It was grey and very, very soft. Why did it feel like these sorts of things happened all the time around Sora?

"That must have sucked," Riku said with as much sympathy as he could muster.

Sora didn't reply to that, and just kept talking in a way that was so Sora it hurt. "It didn't snow on Christmas last year," he said. Gee Sora, thanks for sharing. Riku liked that Sora never even asked about his parents or his life, and he liked it in a way that meant he didn't like it at all, really. But he was a little bit glad, maybe. There was hardly anything to tell. And what there was, was just...generic. The only thing interesting, maybe even a little bit, was the formal Japanese rigidity that hung in the air of the house.

"I hadn't really thought about it till now, but I guess I haven't seen snow in a while," he said. He looked down at Riku and grinned abruptly. "Prolly 'cause of you!" He reached down and ruffled Riku's snowy white angel hair.

Psh. Goddamn it, Sora, he thought, every time I get pissed at you. He smiled to himself.

His smile made Sora stop, sit back up and look all down and up Riku in his jeans and his stupid coat, which he still hadn't taken off just...because. Outside, boys their age were having sword fights with pillows and making lame innuendos and whacking each other with suitcases. Their shouts could be heard through the walls dully.

"You haven't seen snow before, right?" he asked quietly.

Duh. _Duh_, Sora, of _course_ he hadn't, he lived on a _sub-equatorial island_. Hadn't he been - ? He couldn't remember whether or not he'd mentioned it to Sora. Or to anyone. He'd thought he had, but he couldn't think of when, and he didn't know how he would bring that up in a conversation.

Well, it didn't matter.

"No," Riku said. "Not until today."

Outside, "Agh! Don't throw a pencil at my eye, you asshole, that is so gay!"

When Sora heard that he glanced at the closed door, then leaned down and kissed Riku. A real kiss. Not the sort that you hide in an airport waiting for your female friend to get back.

Riku's heart started thumping faster and faster. _Nononononono they're right outside they're right outside what if they want to come in or knock or oh God does the door even **lock **__in this room what if they just open it - they - they can't - _and started to calm down a few seconds later. For one thing, Sora was pretty good at this.

But...far more importantly, to his mind, was the sort of does-not-happen barrier in his mind that came with being raised in the happy suburbs where people didn't get run over or jump off cliffs, or if they did, nobody told you about it. Does not happen. Someone opening the door and having them be shunned as "fags" for the rest of their school lives does not happen, because it just doesn't, because it's too Hollywood or too real-life or anything else in between.

He kissed Sora back, even though he didn't think he was that good at it. Sora seemed to like it when he did that. But his lungs were about to burst open or collapse in on themselves if his boyfriend didn't pull away soon. He was getting dizzy.

He'd never drowned before. But whenever he watched a movie where the protagonist had to swim to the surface from a hidden underground cave or save a drowning civilian he always held his breath with them. He tried to hold on as long at the hero did in the movie, but sometimes he couldn't. What he didn't do was hold his breath when he went past graveyards. He knew some kids did that, or, did when they were ten. They said that if you didn't hold your breath when you went past a graveyard, you'd inhale the souls of dead people. He never held his breath then, because he knew that if he was buried in a graveyard, he wouldn't want anybody to be afraid of him.

He knew it was weird to think about graveyards when you were kissing somebody, but he was starting to feel like that. He wouldn't make a good hero. He would drown. He would drown and he wouldn't say a word.

Sora pulled at the back of Riku's neck until he was sitting up, and Sora was...straddling his waist? He couldn't tell, his eyes were closed, but it kind of felt like a sexy thing. Riku wasn't a terribly sexy guy, and he didn't think about it often.

When Sora pulled away they both took huge, awkard gulps of breath, and he stared at Riku strangely. He stared at Riku like he'd forgotten how to use his face.

Riku's heart was still beating hard from asphyxiation when he pulled Sora down again.

* * *

For certain is death for the born  
And certain is birth for the dead;  
Therefore over the inevitable  
Thou shouldst not grieve.  
- **Bhagvad Ghita**

* * *

When all of the lights were off, it wasn't really dark. The lights in the inner courtyard stayed on, and Sora had refused to draw the blinds because it was still snowing when they went to bed. He said they both ought to be able to watch it in case they woke up in the middle of the night.

"Hey Riku?"

"Yeah."

"Let's build a snowman tomorrow, while everybody else is learning to ski."

"Will we be allowed to do that?"

"I can say that I already know how, and you can probably just say that you don't want to. They won't force us."

Riku wondered how two boys could sleep on the same bed and still be barely touching, but they were doing it. "Okay," he said. It was funny, it was so goddamn funny when you actually had to try and keep warm.

He remembered a night last March when it'd been so hot he'd slept with his shirt pulled up to his armpits and only boxers with no blankets. And now he was huddled in a big old comforter in a pocket of warm.

It was nice.

It reminded him, in a way, of the sleepovers he had as a kid. When he still had sleepovers. He didn't know; he was tired.

"Riku?" Sora said again. Gosh, he could sound so...small sometimes. He rolled around in the bed to face his friend.

"Hm," Riku said, his eyes closed. He put one arm around Sora with a lazy flop, because Sora was warm.

"You had a pet octopus, didn't you? Didn't you say that a while ago?"

"...what the fuck, Sora?"

"I don't know!" Sora sounded bigger, and a little defensive. "I'm just...wondering. You said that, right?"

"Yes. We had a little octopus. I mean, my mom took care of it, mostly, so I dunno."

Sora snuggled into his pillow and Riku felt another pang of fear when he thought that the door was to his back. So he wouldn't see the shadows if somebody walked by, or stopped in front of their room and opened their door. He twisted his head around to glance at it then lay back down.

"How long did it live?" Sora looked like a little kid. He tugged on Riku's pajama shirt. "How long did you have it?"

It had stopped snowing. The sky looked just the same as it did on Destiny Island just before it rained, which Riku thought was kind of funny.

"A year," he grumbled absently. "I think we had it for a little over a year."

"What happened to it?" Sora's question was a quiet, sleepy whisper. Riku frowned at that. Why did Sora assume - ? Maybe it was instinct. When something happened to you, something else probably happened to other things.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing happened to it. It just died."

Sora made a noise in the back of his throat and fisted his hand in Riku's shirt a little more. "How old was it when you got it?"

Riku blearily traced his eyes over the pattern of the wallpaper. "A month or two, I guess," he muttered, "It was the size of a ping-pong ball."

"But why did it _die_ after only a year?"

Riku shrugged, which was hard lying down. "It just did."

"I thought octopuses were really smart. I thought they were like the smartest things in the ocean, or something."

"So?"

Sora squeezed his eyes shut.

Riku thought about the door again and looked down at his boyfriend, then at the other, unmade bed. How had this happened, anyways? They would have to set up the other bed, at least, tomorrow before anyone else came into the room. He really ought to do that now, but...he was comfortable. And Sora was half-asleep already.

Sora pressed his head against the underside of Riku's chin. His hair was coarse and a little scratchy.

"If it's so smart, how come it only lived a year?"

"They all live a year. Octopuses all live a year. Even in the wild," Riku echoed the words of his mother several years back when he'd asked "where George was". He supposed that was his first experience with death, but he didn't count it. For one he'd never paid attention to the thing. For two, when it had died, his mom had just taken it out of the tank and disposed of it when he wasn't around. He never saw the body, or whatever you called the corpse of an octopus. It was just there and then it wasn't.

He remembered the moth again. Half-crushed, newly dead, belly-up on the tile of a hospital floor. He'd been so careful not to step on it. So careful.

"They do?"

"Yeah. They die right after they lay eggs or something. I forget." His mother had said _something _like that, hadn't she? Oh well. If he was wrong, Sora wouldn't know.

"But they're so smart," he said again. It was almost a whimper, but it was too human. "How can something so smart live so short?"

Riku brought his hand up to pet the back of Sora's neck; he didn't know why. It seemed like the right thing to do. There was something different about the way Sora said that. There was nothing that was there before. None of the look-at-me-being-profound cocky naivete. He was like a little kid asking questions about a dead hamster.

"I dunno, Sora," he said. "Maybe they know something we don't."

"You're an idiot," Sora mumbled with a smile, relaxing his body. His breaths became more even. Riku felt hot puffs of air against his collarbone, _haa...haa...haa_...and matched his breathing to Sora's because he could.

He kept thinking about the door behind him.

* * *

Riku wondered if it was a good thing that Sora's phone rang at seven in the morning. Obviously it was bad because it woke them up after five hours of sleep, fitful as it was, but Riku's groggy mind immediately jumped to the unmade bed. "We were both just really cold" was probably not going to be a valid excuse for what they were doing.

His French teacher had said something about being woken up at eight? Was that right? He hoped so.

It took him a few seconds to think this when Sora's cellphone blared beeps. They were muffled. He and Sora hadn't even really bothered to unpack, had they? The phone must have been buried in a suitcase somewhere.

"Shit," he muttered, "Sora. Sora, answer your phone."

Sora was a pretty heavy sleeper. His weight was heavy and warm against Riku's chest when he squirmed and grumbled something. "Sora!"

"Yeah, okay," Sora said. He crawled off of the bed with a sort of dissatisfied groan, and Riku felt a little guilty for barely moving, but it wasn't _his_ phone. He felt a sort of sleepy comfort that he didn't experience often, the feeling that in _here_ is _warm_, and _out there_ is _cold_, so he ought to stay in his tiny little pocket of warmth. Cool air rushed in the fill Sora's place.

"_Allô_?" Sora said, crouched over his bag a meter away in nothing but boxers and a t-shirt. Riku rolled over in his pocket of warm to watch him.

Sora listened for a few seconds wordlessly. "_Ouais, non, non - Rox, écoute-moi, ce n'est pas un_ _problème_. _Ouais. Quand tu arrives ici, je suis sûr que tu peux juste rester - _" Riku tuned out. He was too tired to bother with French right now, and Sora was speaking far too quickly for him to really have any hope of getting anything out of it. Riku knew he'd probably never speak fluent French. For one thing, he just couldn't be bothered. And he was past the age where learning a new language was likely to stick with you.

After a few minutes, in which Riku almost fell asleep again, Sora crawled back onto the bed and woke him up again. "Hey," Riku muttered sleepily. "What's up?"

Sora wiggled underneath the covers and then drew them up over himself and Riku. It was like a tiny, supportless tent. Light filtered through the yellow blankets and created a sort of orange-sunlight dimness in it. "The spazzy motel that he got reservations at overbooked itself or something, so even though his plane gets here the day after tomorrow, he won't have a room until three days from now."

"Oh," Riku said, "That kind of sucks. What's he gonna do?"

Sora shrugged. "I dunno. I was kind of thinking we could sneak him in here just for the night? And then he can go in the early morning?"

"Sora..." Riku didn't bother telling him that there was probably no way they'd let a random kid from another country stay with all of the students in the dorm, because it wasn't like _they_ were staying in a hotel (far too expensive, maybe) and could just rent out another room. But no, Sora had said the word "sneak," hadn't he? That kid was going to get them sent home early.

"I mean, he's my brother," Sora was saying, "It's not like he's a stranger." He laughed. "Maybe we can convince them that that Axel guy is just Mr. Reno!"

Riku rolled his eyes. "If you say so, Sora. ...c'mon. Let's make the other bed."

With a groan he slid out from underneath the covers. The hairs on his legs stood up and he felt actual goosebumps on his arms for the first time in a very long time. Ten degrees and snowing.

Sora laughed and jumped out of the bed right after him. He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands on his hips and said to Riku, "The best way to do it is to face it right away! If it's really that bad your legs go numb after a few minutes, anyways, so you'll get used to it."

Riku rolled his eyes and headed for the stack of sheets on top of the mattress. He pulled out the pillow case and grabbed the uncovered pillow.

"You're so paranoid," Sora said, coming up behind him and putting his arms around Riku's waist. He rested his chin on Riku's shoulder.

"Sorry," Riku said, tugging the pillowcase over the pillow. He glanced back at the door.

_Does not happen.  
_

* * *

They built a snowman on the first day, the second day was entirely consumed by mandatory, whole-class visits to museums, and the third day after a stupid group activity in the park, Sora dragged him to a coffee shop when it started to snow really hard and ordered something French in French from the French barista off of a menu in French. It felt surreal to Riku. Three and a half years of language courses and he still barely understood what was going on around him.

He supposed it was because he couldn't be bothered, again. He recognized words here and there ("_Elle m'a dit_," or "_Oui, si tu veux_," or "_Non, maintenant j'habite au quartier Latin_") and was very proud of himself for understanding French that wasn't synthetic classroom French. Because when they played you a little CD of people speaking very slowly and clearly having the millionth conversation about what they did last weekend in the imperfect past tense, you started to feel a little cheated. Nobody talked like that.

Sora was grinning like a maniac. He kept telling Riku things. On the street walking here: "People don't really buy like, premade stuff that often, like...like you always make your own garlic bread, and when you do buy bread you have to actually go to a bread store since you _really_ shouldn't buy it at the grocery store chains, especially not the pre-sliced kind. _Nobody_ buys that. And - "

Sora was the kind of guy who liked to tell you everything because he wanted it all out there. Apparently it applied to more things than trauma. Riku didn't really mind. Just another facet of Sora the fine-cut diamond, wasn't it? Sheesh. Riku wondered what he'd tell a person visiting Destiny Island for the first time. The only really distinctive thing was the beaches and the white sand from crushed shells. There was a surf shop like every few hundred feet on the coastline. He supposed all they really had was nature.

"Here you go," Sora said in mostly-unaccented English. "I got you hot cocoa and tiramisu." And goddamn it if it wasn't true. He put a porcelain plate with a piece of layered pastry on it.

"What the Hell?" Riku checked his watch. "It's barely past noon. Who eats a fancy desert barely past noon?"

Sora shrugged. "Aw, Riks, we're on vacation! Besides, it's not like to these people we could get any weirder."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, suddenly a little more paranoid. "What's that mean?"

Sora held up one finger. "One," he said, "White hair. Or, I mean, silver, if you want. Two, we're speaking English, and I know you probably don't notice it, but people from Destiny Island actually do have kind of an accent. So even the people here who don't think it's weird we're speaking English think that's weird." He giggled. "How's it feel to be the foreign one for once, huh?"

"I have an accent?" Riku asked. "Really?" He didn't think he sounded that different from the people on TV, and most of that was American or British television, really.

"Yeah," Sora said, "It's not very noticeable, it's just...softer. Kind of. I mean, if I didn't speak English pretty much fluently I wouldn't hear it at all. It's just like...English, but rounded on the edges. I guess it's not that much of a thing. Took me a few weeks to realize it on the island, anyways."

"Oh," Riku said. Sora picked up a fork and started to poke at the tiramisu. Oh, great job, Sora. Sharing food, that wasn't couple-y. Though, to be fair, France did have kind of a reputation for being flamboyant, right?

"Um," Sora said. "I told Roxas to meet us here. Today." He tugged on Riku's watch until he could see the face. "And, um, he's supposed to get here in ten minutes?"

Riku just stared at him. Well. Well, shit. Time to meet the family, Riku. Don't fuck this one up with your socially retarded monosyllabic grunts.

* * *

There was a jingle when the door opened. People never look the same in photos as they do in real life.

Roxas was a little short for his age, but not by much, and it was true. His hair did look like Sora's when he slept with it wet, pushed to the side a little. His eyes were blue, too, but they weren't the color of Sora's eyes.

He had a sharp little face. Riku didn't know what else there was to say about it. Roxas wasn't smiling, but the Reno-clone behind him was.

It was that guy - Alex? Probably - from the pictures Riku had seen. He was grinning.

"Rox!"

"Ah! Oh, Sora," Roxas said. His brother jumped up from the table and hugged him. Riku was the only one left sitting there. It felt kind of wrong, especially when Roxas pulled away from Sora and looked him in the eyes briefly. He said nothing, just turned to Sora again and said something in French. Riku was pretty sure he said something about the flight over, but Roxas spoke quickly.

"So, you're Axel?" Sora grabbed his brother's wrist and brought him and his friend over to sit down at the table. The redhead nodded.

"Ah, right," there was something funny about how Roxas spoke? Maybe? Riku couldn't tell yet. "Sora," yes, there was, "Zis ez Axel, euh, from ze circus?"

Roxas had an incredibly thick French accent. It wasn't thick enough that nobody could understand him, but it was almost painfully distinct. His Rs had that weird throaty French pronunciation, and he couldn't seem to make a "th" sound. Sora was right about him not speaking English nearly as fluently.

"Oh, right, yeah, I remember," Sora said easily. "You're a...trapeze artist, right?"

Axel seemed to find Sora's lack of an accent as intriguing as Riku found Roxas's distinct one.

Riku was almost silent the whole conversation. Roxas was barely more talkative. He kept glancing at Riku, awkwardly, maybe angrily, Riku couldn't tell. But he kept doing it for almost the whole hour.

* * *

Sneaking the two of them in had been almost disgustingly easy. After a day of silently worrying over it, all they'd had to do was wait until the teachers went to go talk to have Axel and Roxas run up the back stairs and into their room. And yeah, Sora made the rounds and pestered all his friends before they decided to come and pester him.

After a day of walking around behind the two siblings, who spoke together in hushed tones and a foreign language, it felt kind of nice to have Sora to himself in the bed.

And he wasn't being paranoid, this time, about the way the two boys had...been. Roxas was...he didn't know. But when Sora had mentioned that Riku spoke decent French, Roxas had stared at him for a good four or five seconds straight and then said something to Sora in lightning-fast French, his words slurred together and undecipherable to anyone who wasn't a native speaker. And he'd kept doing it that way.

They'd kept talking to each other the whole time. Riku understood it, sure, you didn't see your only living family for a year and you'd miss them, but...

Tomorrow. That was for tomorrow. Nononono, for now, for _now_, the snow was still pretty and there was a spider crawling along the sink of the bathroom.

* * *

"I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anyone tell me that I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, or that something's wrong with me because I get angry."  
- **Maxine Waters**

**

* * *

**

Roxas couldn't sleep.

Since he'd gotten here, he'd just...

_Sora_ had a _boyfriend_. Sora. His brother. His older brother. A _boy_friend. Of course, he'd known that before he came. He'd known the name "Riku." He'd even heard Sora tentatively mention that he liked a boy before they'd apparently started dating.

Riku was just...he was just a _douche_! He didn't _talk_ and he stared at Roxas like he was a _freak_ for talking the way he did. It wasn't Roxas's fault. It was just so hard to pronounce these words right. He could speak whole sentences with an accent or he could talk like a halting robot without one.

It killed him, it really did, and there was no beating around the bush about it. Riku had been there on March fourteenth. He'd kissed Roxas's older brother. It was like Sora had made his own family without even telling him. It wasn't...fair. He'd talked and talked about Destiny Island this and that, when Roxas had spent so long struggling to stay sane.

The night their lives had burned down, Roxas was having a sleepover at a friend's house. He hadn't been there. Not like Sora, who'd come home late, who'd seen it glow red, who'd burned his hand so badly he was still recovering a year and a half later.

People - several people and always, always adults - had told him how lucky he was that he'd been unharmed.

Sora was the only one of the two of them with a real actual scar to show for it. He had a place to put it all.

Sometimes, Roxas wondered if Sora was the lucky one.

He didn't cry very often, and when he did, it was late at night when he didn't have anything to distract him and he was left all alone with his overactive imagination. Nobody knew it to look at him, but you could tell, with Sora, his hand told you.

Roxas lay on the extra bed, aware of Axel's snoring behind him, but what the hell else was new. Axel sort of took up an entire bed on his own, which meant Roxas was stuck curling in on the edge, and he still had to rest his head over his best friend's neck. Whatever. Axel was the deepest sleeper he knew. It probably came from always being towed around in a circus trailer.

He had a perfect view of the other bed. Sora and Riku had just gotten in, so Roxas half-closed his eyes to make sure he looked properly asleep.

His brother's boyfriend got in the side closest to Roxas, which pissed him off a little, but probably wasn't meant to.

Riku was...pretty. He would say that. Objectively speaking, even if he was the condescending gay douche dating his older brother, he had silver hair and green eyes and he seemed unsettlingly thoughtful. He wasn't what...Roxas had...expected. But then again, he was from Sora. Sora never did what you expected him to, and Roxas could testify to that in court.

The condescending gay douche that Roxas had met nine hours ago flopped onto a pillow and heaved a contented sigh before pulling the blankets up to his chest. Sora crawled in behind him and Roxas saw him grinning. He lay down next to Riku and muttered something in plain English.

His voice got a little louder and he sat up again. "Don't you think so?"

"I don't know, Sora," Riku said. "Maybe there isn't any reason. Sometimes there just isn't." What did that even mean? Jeez, look at Riku, acting like he knew all the answers. Roxas bet that Riku was the kind of guy that abused his boyfriends.

"But - "

"Sora," the guy said, and Roxas watched, still with half-lidded eyes, as Riku turned to his brother and put his hand on his cheek. Sora smiled.

_Why, Sora?_

They hadn't acted this way during the day. Roxas had kinda hoped he'd misinterpreted the whole dating thing for becoming good friends. Riku was still talking. "Don't worry about it, okay? Just go to sleep for now."

_Why are you doing this to me?_

"It's been bothering me, though." Riku patted the pillow next to his head, and Sora lay down all the way. Roxas couldn't see his face any more.

"Don't let it," Riku said, "It's...just an animal. And they've been around for a while, I guess, so they must know what they're doing."

There was a long pause. "...yeah," Sora said eventually. Riku made a grunting noise and there was a wet sound. _Gross_. They probably _kissed_. Sora! Your little brother is in the room!

_You have to know I'm awake._

Riku flipped around so his face was to Roxas again, a meter away, with his eyes closed. Sora said something quietly and Riku smirked without opening his eyes.

_You're paying enough attention to me to know I'm awake, aren't you? Don't you remember how I always snore like a pig when I'm asleep? Didn't you always tell me that?_

He felt his insides ball up into a tiny sack of awful when his brother's arm came around Riku's torso and stayed there. Not the other way around, not Riku trying to take Sora away, which would have been bad but still _bearable_. Sora was...he was...Roxas was getting left behind. He squeezed his eyes shut really tight and hiccupped, but passed it off as a sleep sound. He couldn't stand it.

He flipped around in the bed and looked at Axel.

There was that same feeling. It was alright if he was with Axel. Shit happened and brothers abandoned you but at the end of the day you still had an _Axel_, or if you didn't, you emailed him and he sent you back some ridiculous rambling letter that had nothing to do with what you'd asked, but still reminded you he was there. He was snoring kind of obnoxiously. It was almost strange to see Axel without the stage makeup, two little inverted triangles under his cheeks, and for once not grinning like an ass.

He kind of, briefly, wished that Axel might do something like put his arm around Roxas.

Roxas wasn't _gay_ or anything, by any means. He kind of wished he were because then he wouldn't be hopelessly in love with his foster-brother's fiancée. Or at least hopelessly infatuated.

But he kind of wished Axel would stop being Axel when he was asleep and show his friendly affection. _See, Sora, I'm moving on, too! If you get to leave, then - then I - _

He bit his lip really hard and squeezed his eyes shut. It just...wasn't fair.

"Hey, kiddo," Axel was kind of half-awake.

Roxas remembered the first time he'd been in Axel's trailer, all of a sudden, and that made him feel better for no reason at all.

_"You 'ave only got ze two forks," Roxas pointed to the cutlery drawer. "For you and your roommate?"_

_"Yeah," Axel said in American-English. "Me and Dem. Why?"_

_"...don't you evair 'ave friends ovair to eat?"_

_At which Axel had shifted his weight awkwardly on his feet and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. "I have a friend, but he doesn't have any hands," he'd said, glancing at the cat on the bed._

_Roxas laughed._

"You okay? Roxie?"

"Don't call me zat," Roxas said halfheartedly, opening his eyes to stare at Axel. "But yes, I zink I am fine."

Axel glanced over his head at the two boys in the bed across from them. "Don't worry about it, man," Axel said. "I dunno what it's like for gay guys, but when you're a teenager and you get your first girlfriend, that's pretty much all you can think about for a few weeks. They'll get over all the lovey-dovey couple crap." Axel's whispers were really gravelly and a little unsettling if you weren't used to them.

Roxas rolled his eyes and flicked Axel's chest. But yeah. Axel. The feel-better circus man.

He fell asleep after a little while.

* * *

"There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed."  
- **W. Somerset Maugham**

* * *

It was the strangest thing that morning. When Riku woke up at just past six in the morning for an emergency bathroom trip (after carefully extracting himself from Sora's greedy sleep death hold, which was really kind of a little flattering) he'd seen Axel in there, brushing his teeth.

"Oh, hey man," Axel said through a mouthful of toothpaste. Riku blinked.

Axel spat in the sink, rinsed out his mouth and looked up at him again. "Circus instincts," he explained, "I'm on a total internal clock right now 'cause we have such a crazy schedule most of the year. I could tell you about it, but it gives _me _a headache," he grinned.

"Oh," Riku said. He tried to remember whether or not he was glaring at the guy in front of him, or if what he was doing just counted as staring.

The tiles were cold against his bare feet, but he hadn't bothered putting on his shoes.

"...yeah," Axel gave him a funny look, which Riku took to mean he'd done something socially weird again. He shrugged and headed for the stall furthest from where Axel was standing.

Just before he went in, a flickering of the fluorescent lights caught his eye. He looked up; they were fine.

But a you-know-what, of course, because they were the only thing in Riku's life that made sense any more, was flitting towards the line of bathroom mirrors. It was very small, but very there. That moth just about killed Riku.

It landed on a faucet briefly, then flitted up to the mirror, then to the next sink over. It kept crawling all over the place. Riku smiled.

"Damn," Axel said. "Hang on, I'll get it." With a _smack!_ he clapped his hand against the sink and lifted it up. There was a little brown smudge on the sink and on his hand. He looked at his palm, shrugged, and wiped it on his pants.

Riku stood there and felt his eyes quiver sort of, his mouth a slightly open line. His jaw quivered, too.

"You okay, man?"

Riku knew it was stupid and dumb and pointless and a million other things, but it felt like there was a shelf fungus growing in his throat that wouldn't go down no matter how hard he tried to swallow.

He stared at Axel, the kind of stare that went right goddamn through you, and went right goddamn through Axel, too. He nodded, carefully closed the stall door and slid the latch closed. He leaned up against the cool wall of the tile and closed his eyes.

Riku Tepes was probably the loneliest person in the whole world.

* * *

A/N: D8 FUCK, AXEL. FDASJKGALJDSA. JUST FUCK. Excuse my French.

1) I know the Roxas-and-Axel-showing-up-thing was a little rushed. Trust me, there will be much more awkward acclimation next chapter (...fun). But there was some stuff I wanted to get in there right-right-away.

2) ...I have discovered that there is no way to write a French accent without making it look ridiculous and stereotyped. This bothers me. And yeah, there's a whole blurb about it, but that's in a different story (or will be soon) and you don't have to read it to understand this story.

3) I know I used that same quotation again, but it's important, and applies to virtually the same thing.

So this is pretty much a 13.5-thousand-word chapter, which means it's really long. So I'd like to know what you thought. I mean, if you wanna just go on to the next update in your email inbox, that's cool too, since I do that (~I'm such a lurker)...I dunno. Yeah. Thoughts are nice, good or bad.

GUESS WHO IS GOING TO BE THIGH-DEEP IN MARSH MUD TOMORROW~. This is a good thing. No it is not a spa treatment.


	14. When You Build Bridges

* * *

**They Must Lead You Elsewhere.**

**

* * *

**

A/N: Haha. "In which Sora is a pervert and Kairi makes pastries." Are crepes pastries? Anyways.

Okay first of all. What the heck happened last chapter? Are Axel and Roxas really that exciting, or was it just "let's screw with Nitlon's little pet statistics theory" day or something? Because I know I'm not gonna hear from all you people again this chapter and now it's gonna be disappointing and like...oh well. I will just put this down in my book as a Bizarre Anomaly.

Oh. And. And. Thanks to Minikimii who, while not actually beta-ing anything, let me bother her over MSN pretty much...every day? I bounced ideas off of her while she was thinking important thinky-thoughts. And mumbling about sodium.

...it's ten o'clock, do you know where _my _sanity is? I need to be put down. Or...tranquilized. I am...so sorry.

* * *

"Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened.  
"So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune."  
- **Arundhati Roy**, _The God of Small Things_, p. 20

* * *

and Riku smelled like skin in the shower all clean but not soapy yet just _there_ and human and Riku smelled like oakwood like Sora's grandfather's house before grandpa got sent to live in a home and before grandma died

and they must have been on a wall or a tree or a veryhighup-place because there wasn't anything around but there was sky and there was what they were sitting on but around them nothing except sky and air and Riku who was everywhere always

and Riku was kissing him Riku kissed Sora kissed Riku who did something that real Riku never would with his tongue in Sora's mouth and _ohhhh_ it felt pretty nice, and Riku was hugging him with his arms all around everywhere

and Sora could feel Riku's hips up against his own Riku's hips sharp like two foci on an ellipse and sometimes it seemed like that was the thickest part of his body like it wasn't his head holding him together and

Sora took a big gasping breath and went in for more kissing which was deep and open-mouthed and desperate oh God it was so desperate like he'd never kissed anybody else before and he never ever wanted to kiss anybody else but Riku

which he didn't

and Riku had his hands on Sora's sides running his fingers up and down like feathers like feathers made of light or water or fire but not earth because that was too heavy like hands made of sky or

so Sora put an arm around Riku's neck and an arm around Riku's two sharp hips and pulled him forward and clamped him there with legs and the wind

tickled the hairs on the backs of their necks and it felt like spiders crawling on your skin but in a nice way in a way that spiders were nice because they had been there for so long like Sora felt he had been here for so long waiting waiting waiting for something to happen or for - because Riku was here _now_ and it felt like Riku had been there _always_ because as much as he changed, he didn't, and he was the thing that didn't change and that waited for Sora and he was the thing that pressed up against Sora's body with their eyes closed and their lips locked in a kiss

and Sora couldn't pull away he couldn't make himself do it so he breathed in through his nose over and over again because he was so scared, scared like if he stopped to take a breath Riku would stop kissing him forever and ever and ever

so he tucked his fingers in where Riku's jaw met his ears and pulled him forward to keep him there and Riku did something he would never actually do in real life ever, no matter what, with his hands and he kept running his sky fingers everywhere and where he touched there was the air, like breath like still, like Sora could

_breathe _again.

he gasped in big gulps of air and looked in Riku's eyes which were real Riku's eyes, like snake eyes or no, like dragon eyes _God _were they beautiful and when they weren't beautiful they were so distracting so, so distracting so, Sora kissed him again and one of them made a noise

and because Sora _knew_ it was a dream and he _knew_ that he could he slid his hands under Riku's shirt

because he was a teenage boy and he couldn't _help_ it because Riku was so soft and pretty but he was also sharp and pointy with dragon eyes, Riku was a dragon, a land dragon on an island running his thumbs along Sora's belly and licking Sora's teeth in a way that real Riku never ever ever would because he just didn't have it in him, and anyways, he wouldn't be Riku if he did

but dream Riku kissed him like a hungry snakedragon and held Sora close and licked his collarbone and bit him, not enough to break the skin but enough to remind Sora that he was a teenage boy and that this was a teenageboydream but that it didn't matter because Riku's hands were tickling the line of his pants

so Sora dug the five points of his hand into dream Riku's ohsosoft silver dragon hair and it was coarse and slipped through his fingers like mud and then dream, Riku smirked against Sora's neck and kissed it in that onlyinyourteenageboydreams hairtearing swearmouthing hipbucking way

in a way that made Sora's stomach feel like it was quivering inside of him something twitched

in a way that made Sora's legs twitch suddenly all the way through like getting shocked with a lightning bolt like running a marathon and

* * *

The kicking of his own legs was what woke Sora up. He was panting hard, and his blood pumped in his ears with a sort of forced swishing sound, like he'd gone for a run. The air was so cold that inhaling almost hurt in a dull, thudding way.

He sat up a little bit, and the blankets fell down a little bit. He was hit by the frozen wave of mornings in the winter, so he lay back down and waited for the blood to rush back into his brain.

It took a few minutes for the first _you're an awful person_ to hit him. Sora knew it was normal, but that didn't make it feel right to have sex dreams. He didn't like it.

Which was a lie, of course, he loved them when they were happening, but after he woke up he felt so dirty and horrible. Dirty...was the right word for it. At least they were of Riku and not some random person his mind made up. He felt a little bad, though, that while dream Riku looked like real Riku, he behaved very differently.

Sora heard a shift on a bed, the creak of someone flipping for the cool side of the pillow, someone who wasn't Riku. Sora feels his already thick stomach get heavier and sink lower. _Roxas_.

He'd had a sex dream while in a room with his little brother. His little brother who always hated change and was probably still adjusting to his brother's intimacy with another boy, let alone Sora having dreams about Riku doing - _things_ - ! Sora hated himself in that moment. He hated himself so deeply that he could hardly bare to turn around to look at Riku, because across from Riku was Roxas. His kid brother - his - .

Sora knew that Roxas maybe had dreams like that but...no, no, he couldn't think about that. The same way he couldn't think about the hotness coiled inside of his stomach which, the first time he'd had it, he'd thought just meant he really needed to pee. The same way he absolutely refused to acknowledge the thing _below_ his stomach because it just felt so...nasty and dirty and gross and he wanted it to _go away_.

He took a few really deep breaths, then peeled the corner of his covers back, letting some cold air inside. He shifted his legs around a little and could, maybe, feel it getting a little better. The hotness in his belly, meeting the algid morning air, and it helped because it was distracting. To a degree.

It is better, Sora thought. But it is better in the way that treading water in a river with two hundred piranas is better than treading water in a river with two hundred and one piranhas.

He took a very deep breath and closed his eyes; he rolled over onto his side to look at Riku. Or, the back of Riku's head. And the expanse of Riku's back, which was covered by a t shirt, but was still weird to look at since in Sora's dream - well, no. Sora stopped thinking about that. The hotness in his stomach would coil tighter if he didn't.

But as he came down, slowly, off of his dream-high from pent-up sexual frustration and teenage hormones, he got another feeling. It was delivered slowly, in liquid form, into his lungs and took their shape like hot wax. Quarter to six in the morning and it was the strangest thing, because his head was so cool and so was his torso, from being up in the cold air, but his waist and his legs were disgustingly warm and a little damp with sweat and the heat still coiled in his tummy, because he was staring at his _boyfriend_ and still feeling a sort of aching want in his throat and his lungs.

Sora Goodwin looked at Riku Tepes, and he wanted.

It wasn't as if he didn't have Riku, or at least, as much as anybody ever had another person. He was dating Riku. Riku who used to glare at everyone, whose mp3 player was his best friend, who stumbled over his words because he somehow wasn't quite in the practice of using them or, maybe, just didn't want to.

And yeah, Riku kind of hated everything, but he seemed to like Sora. And Sora had always been sort of...prone to jealousy. Or if not jealousy than a tugging possessiveness, want _me_, think about _me_, dream about _me,_ I dream about you. So it was perfect, really.

Riku did like him. He'd made it pretty clear or, at least, as clear as Riku Tepes could make liking a person. Riku kissed back when Sora kissed him. He listened. He smiled, sometimes, and he hugged when it was important. So at least...at least Sora knew he was being irrational.

He just sort of wished Riku wanted him the way he wanted Riku. The wanting...came in waves. It was worst in the morning, because every time he woke up he was scared that Riku was already awake. It was like a pet fear of his, to wake up to Riku's horrified face: "You were dreaming _what_ about me? God, that's disgusting!"

He knew Riku wouldn't do that. But he feared. On his worse days, Sora's mantra was that nothing was permanent.

The want in his lungs wouldn't go away, even though he tried to breathe it out, so he shook his head uselessly. He reached his hand out, brushed the hair on the back of Riku's head with the backs of his knuckles. It was smooth, clumping just a little from what was probably sweat and oil build-up overnight. Sora put a hand to his own head and scratched it, because it reminded him, and now he felt itchy.

Riku made a "mmf" noise, squeezed his eyes shut, then cracked one open. He rolled over, and the mattress squeaked underneath him; _krrkrrkrrk_. Instinctively, Sora glanced up at the other bed. Roxas hadn't moved. Buried under the blankets like a termite.

Sora looked back down at Riku, who was frowning at him a squinty-eyed morning frown. "What is it?"

"What?"

"You were looking at me funny."

Sora almost laughed at that, but, but, Roxas was in the room and he was like a dog, he hated change, and. Sora smiled at Riku, who narrowed his eyes thoughtfully then relaxed his whole face, smooth and - in a way that was just so _Riku_, so blank and maybe sharp with residual anger stuck in his eyes like cobwebs, that it made the want swell up like heated gas. But at least the dream was fading.

Real Riku didn't smell like soap. He didn't smell like much of anything, anymore, because Sora was so used to him; the bed smelled like boy-sweat.

"Are you...sure that you're okay?"

Sora shook his head, which could have meant anything, really, and shrugged. So his friend kept his face very blank and - and Riku reached up, with just a hand, and touched his fingers to Sora's cheek. He frowned, thoughtfully - again, and his fingers were cool. Cool and smooth, because they'd grown up on an island with the rest of him, no hard labor, and maybe you didn't need good circulation on an island where it was always warm. Sora thought about it, about how a lot of people probably had soft hands, but maybe a couple hundred years ago it was only nobles. 'Cause everyone had to work on a farm.

Riku kissed Sora with his fingers, and Sora laughed quietly like it would let the nervous out of his stomach and reached up a hand to mimic the action. But something in his heart started to hurt when he saw the criss-cross net pattern on his hand. Skin that was not his, glued onto his palm, hideous. Deformed, maybe. It looked like fine fence mesh had gotten stuck on his hand and the skin had grown over it.

"S- sorry," he said, and tucked his hand back under the comforters.

"Huh? Why?" Riku asked. It wasn't even that sort of 'I know you mean your hand but I'm trying to tell you I don't mind' question. Riku just...didn't know. Sora kinda loved that.

"Nothing," he said. But he kept his hand in a tight fist by his thigh.

Riku Tepes grabbed his wrist, brought it up, and looked at Sora's fist. He relaxed his hand, though. It wasn't like this was anything knew to Riku. Sora knew, though, knew it was disgusting, sorry it existed, wished it would go away because people could see it and it wasn't - wasn't _really_ - skin, it wasn't. It didn't move with the muscles of his hand. Every part of him knew it was foreign. It was like having a rock in your sandal.

So feeling another hand, a smooth, cool one, around his wrist, made him angry and happy and the same time.

And the way that Riku stared at it, stared at his hand with a carefully blank expression like he was reading a math problem, Sora started to imagine lazers coming out of his eyes. _Zzzp_, all over his hand.

For a couple of nice seconds, Sora fancied Riku would do something sweet and romantic, like kiss his fingertips or his palm, or press his cheek against Sora's hand. Which pretty effectively told Sora that, yeah, he was still drifting in dream-land, and really, he wasn't _that_ needy. He just...liked to know that people were there. That they would be there for a long time. He was just...a little sappy, sometimes, and he was allowed to be. Just 'cause Riku was a teenage boy and acted like it (except for the libido part, growled what was left of the coiled hotness) didn't mean that Sora had to be. He was just a little sappy, because sometimes people did things like die when you were at Cid's house and came back late.

It was more of a precautionary measure than anything else.

Riku didn't kiss his palm, or lace their fingers, or anything, really.

Sometimes it didn't so much feel like there was skin on there as it felt like there was rolly bumpy cloth sticking to your muscles.

* * *

"The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead."  
- **W. Somerset Maugham**

**

* * *

**

Riku looked at Sora's hand, and Sora, on his side above him, and wondered if his hand still hurt. Did it still hurt, even after it was fixed, if you'd had it be un-fixed for so long? Did you get ghost pains in your hand? Did your brain even still let it be your hand, could you feel - anything, if it wasn't your skin?

All the thought about skin made Riku feel uncomfortably metaphorical.

But for some reason he sort of didn't want to put Sora's hand back. "Put it back" like you were browsing soup cans in a grocery store.

He didn't know why he'd done that thing with his hand on Sora's face. It was just another one of those little world things that happened, around Sora they happened too much.

Riku Tepes felt like Sora Goodwin knew more than he did about _everything_ and it made him angry. Just because he didn't know anybody who'd died, that made him - irrelevant, or - ? Jeez. He didn't know if Sora thought that about him, didn't really care, but it was more Riku Tepes being mad at the world.

And that thought, that oh-so-comfortable, thought-so-much thought, made Riku laugh just under loud and press the pad of his thumb to Sora's middle finger. He closed one eye and kept the other open, if a little blurry; blinked at the crust mister sand man had put in his eyes overnight. Sora seemed very high up, since Riku's head wasn't even on the pillow, and he was sitting up halfway, and Hell if that didn't seem right up to par with Mister No-shoes.

Sora grinned at him, a real shit-eating grin, which was when there was a dull sort of creak from the other bed and Sora's face died. Or fell, maybe, was the right word for it. Deflated.

The sleepy happiness was gone; Sora's eyes were wide when he stared at the other bed and he swallowed nervously.

Riku didn't really know what to do. Or even...why. Was something wrong in the other bed?

"S- sorry," Sora apologized for something he didn't understand, pulled his hand back and dug himself further under the covers. Riku wondered, though, he was so goddamn curious because yeah, you'd think it was maybe about we're acting gay and what if someone sees us but it was only ever _Riku_ who even gave a _little_ bit of a shit about it so - Sora?

But Riku wasn't good with people. He didn't know how they worked, inside or out, or how to fix them. So he got up and went to the bathroom.

And Axel killed a moth.

And after Axel left Riku washed his hands and then spent ten minutes rubbing out the brown smudge left on the sink with his wet fingers until his ears started to ring with the sound of skin squeaking over tile. It was like dust. Powder. It disappeared after a few seconds but - it wasn't _gone_. Like paint like dust like powder, _burlkburlkburlk_, and God things were so _dead_ when they died. He had to keep rubbing it out or his mind would start running.

How could Axel do that? Hell if Riku knew the guy at all, but if Axel was Roxas's friend, then he must have known Roxas's parents were dead, must have known that you didn't just take life...didn't...you just _didn't_.

Which made Riku realize that, yeah, okay, maybe he was right the first time. Maybe he did think differently. Wrong, even. Who the fuck got upset over a moth? A stupid _bug_! That guy was the normal one. Riku was fucked up. He was fucked up and he didn't even have the excuse of dead parents.

He was fucked up and he didn't care.

He straightened and wiped his hands on his pants, saw himself in the mirror; shorter hair still snowy-angel-white. He sighed and swallowed thickly. The irony of being in a bathroom hit him pretty quickly; _Guess I'm the one who needs a second now, huh, Sora?_

Someone had written something on the mirror. Or - no, Riku leaned over and smoothed his fingers over it. Someone had scratched an English word into the mirror, which struck Riku as pretty funny, but he'd seen Spanish and even sometimes German slang on the buses on Destiny Island, so maybe English was like that in France.

_Arctic_, it said, in broken, uneven and differently sized letters. Riku imagined someone sitting there on the sink, maybe desperate, late at night when he (it would be a he, since it was a boys' dorm) was sure nobody else would come in, pinching a paperclip between two tired fingers and deciding to scratch that word in there. Why? What did "arctic" mean?

Riku sighed. Maybe it didn't mean anything. Nothing ever meant anything.

It just didn't.

* * *

Sora hid under the blankets while Riku was gone because that Axel guy was coming back in.

"Hey, Rox," was the gravelly voice. It was a little hard to breathe, suffocating under blankets, but Sora didn't want to make it awkward. Besides, it was comfortable and he was barefoot, even though he was pretty sure that Riku had worn socks to bed? And anyways.

"Mmf," said Sora's little brother.

"I'm going for a walk, okay? Promise I'll be back in fifteen, twenty minutes tops. Hey, don't go back to sleep, Frenchie!" There was a groan. "_Tu marches toujours_," was the mumble.

"Uh, sure," Axel said, "I'm not gonna pretend to know what that means. It's still pretty early, but - "

"You're always walking," Roxas said, accent there but not as thick as usual. There was silence for a good few seconds, almost painful but, hey, Hell if Sora didn't know about awkward silences.

"Yeah," Axel said quietly. "I am. Get some sleep, kiddo. I think we can check in at like, noon?"

"Okay." Sora couldn't help it. With just the crook of his finger he pulled the blanket down a little to watch them, just in time to see a big hand on his little brother's head, which made him happy. 'Cause sure it was a guy that worked at a circus, only there for one month a year, but Roxas had a Riku.

No - wait. Sora nearly snorted out loud at that.

_No_, he corrected his thoughts, _I do not want my straight little brother dating a twenty-one-year-old. That is not what I meant. He has a person._

Which kind of had him wondering if his little brother wanted him dating a seventeen-year-old boy. But Roxas probably didn't care that much, right? He probably didn't, Sora was just being silly. Roxas probably thought that Riku would disappear from their lives as soon as he graduated high school.

Which was a thing that Sora didn't actually want to think about at all.

* * *

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."  
- **Herman Hesse**

* * *

Day four meant getting dragged to a French cuisine cooking class for tourists and trying to make it seem normal that it was thirty kids who spoke the same dialect of English with softened consonants and thirty assorted Christmas tourists.

Oh yeah, Riku thought, Christmas is in two days. Oops. He wondered if you were supposed to get a present for your boyfriend, or if you were just supposed to watch a cheesy movie together or something. Oh well. Maybe he'd ask Sora. Sora probably knew these sorts of things.

It was like he'd missed a _class_ somewhere on how to properly behave. Or been sick the day they handed out brochures on etiquette. There were things you didn't say, people you had to mention, topics you didn't go near. He didn't get it. Didn't get why it was okay to talk about a kid who you thought tried to kill himself but was absolutely forbidden to say his parents had died in an accidental fire. And maybe he was the one with the problem, but if that was okay, then he was fine being a problem.

Nobody should talk about suicide, and this cooking class was one-hundred-thirty-five suicides long.

Riku wondered when he'd started thinking in things in terms of suicides, like they were standard units of time, like if he thought about them that way it wasn't people killing people after a while.

He shivered and told himself it was a little disturbed to be thinking these sorts of things when you were in a cuisine class at ten o'clock in the morning, and just because you had a conscience didn't mean you had to keep it _on_ all the time.

He snorted. He didn't think a class catered for tourists was really all that much culture. That was like going on a tour bus through New York and saying you'd experienced the city.

You hadn't.

You'd experienced the bullshit the tour guide had spewed about how many cars crossed the bridge in a day and what famous person lived here and however many other meaningless things.

So he watched the chef with a big tall white hat talk about the history of crepes, what they're used for, talk about French desserts in the world, tell them to get into pairs.

So, Sora went with Roxas who was, of course, there.

And it wasn't that Riku minded cooking with Kairi. It wasn't like he had any interest in cooking anyways. He could make eggs and toast and pasta, and he could probably figure out stir fry if he tried. That was enough for him.

"Hey, can you measure out - " Kairi checked the recipe, "Two tablespoons of powdered sugar now?"

"Uh-huh," Riku said. When he put the measure in the bag, of course, it wheezed at him and a _poof_ of white powder erupted into the air. It tickled the inside of his nostrils and he had to keep from sneezing. He looked around; apparently it was a pretty unimportant and small poof because nobody seemed to care, and it was already gone. He drew the sugar out, dumped it in the bowl, and dumped another in a few seconds later.

The room was set up like a classroom with counters full of ingredients instead of desks, and Roxas was right in front of Riku, which made it kind of hard to give a shit when Kairi started mixing ingredients together.

It was a pang of - not _jealousy_, exactly. Being jealous of a person's brother was a stupid thing to be jealous of. Of course he hadn't been there when Sora was a baby. Didn't _want_ to be. He had his hands full dealing with Sora the _teenager_.

But watching them - ...Sora said something to his little brother, and Roxas snorted and elbowed him in the ribs. Sora stuck his tongue out and smeared some flour on Roxas's shirt. Roxas flicked his ear. Sora said something to him, Roxas laughed, shook his head, stuck _his _tongue out and said something back in lightning quick French. Sora frowned and said something back with that sort of teasing-older-brother lilt Riku had heard in his own siblings.

It didn't make _sense_. Riku had older brothers. He had _three_ older brothers. And it wasn't like they never talked. It was just that...they all had other things to do. They were on good terms and all. But Riku never talked with them the way Sora and Roxas were. Even when they came home from college, there were the cursory "Sup Riku. How's high school?"

"Dunno. It is."

"Hn. I remember high school." And the brother - any of them, really, because it was one thing they had in common, the not-talking - would say, "Well, you'll be out soon anyways." And that would be it.

It made Riku wonder a little. Were Sora and Roxas the normal ones? Maybe they were the normal ones. Despite the family-separation-orphaning thing. Maybe they acted how brothers were supposed to, instead of the you-stay-out-of-my-way-I'll-stay-out-of-yours thing Riku did. Wouldn't be the first thing that Sora the orphan-with-a-fucked-up-hand did more normally than Riku. It wasn't so much that that might be true, but that Riku didn't _know_, that made him feel kind of funny on the inside.

Especially when Roxas glanced back at him.

Roxas Orcot-Goodwin's stare could cut right through a person.

And Riku was still staring at the back of his head after he turned around.

* * *

Sora laughed and fwapped Roxas's shoulder. And, in French, because he figured Roxas deserved a break, "Would you relax already? You keep glancing behind you like you expect something to attack!"

"I think your friend is looking at me_,_" Roxas shot back. The words stumbled off of his tongue like prisoners off a slave ship. So glad to be - _anywhere_ but inside.

"Who?" Sora spoke too slowly for Roxas's taste. But he was so depraved that even being in France, he savored every non-English word that came out of anyone's mouth. "Riku?" - and of course the guy would hear his own name! Jeez, Sora - "Don't worry. He looks at everyone a little weird. He's just kinda...not good with that stuff. Like, social things, I think."

"Jesus, Sora, you make it sound like your boyfriend is autistic." And Roxas would admit to putting a little harshness into the word _boyfriend_ every time he had to say it.

"He's not! He's just antisocial, okay? I told you, he's really sweet." He tried to mix all the flour and powdered sugar and dry stuff together in the bowl without puffs. But Sora's smile looked like it hurt.

"...I really don't care, Sora," Roxas said.

He looked down at the counter. This was fucking ridiculous. Who the hell made _pancakes_ when - who the hell took a class on how to make pancakes? He felt like banging his head on the table. He felt like going outside and staring at the sun until he couldn't see anymore. He felt like sinking.

Frankly.

That is to say.

What a goddamn lonely person Roxas Orcot-Goodwin was.

But at least he had a fucking right to be.

"Do you - Roxas?" Sora leaned the spatula on the side of the bowl to look at him. Roxas hated his brother's eyes. He hated looking at them because Sora had the pretty eyes. "Do you really hate him? Just because he's a boy?"

What Roxas really wanted to say to him in that moment was Oh, Sora, I have plenty of reasons to hate him! But he didn't.

"Never mind."

"I mean it!"

Of course you did! Roxas breathed in deeper. You just have to defend him and your whole little _island_ like you took an extended vacation without me and I got sent to prison for not getting my hand burned enough. Just because I'm your little brother doesn't make me naive.

But Roxas didn't say that. He just sighed and poured some water into the bowl.

Everything was fucking complicated and it gave him a headache. He didn't even know who to be mad at anymore.

* * *

_Arctic_.

Riku was distracted. What was arctic? Was it talking about snow? About the Arctic circle? Current? He was really curious, probably because he knew there was no way for him to find out. He was pretty easily distracted.

"Hey, Riku?" Kairi nudged him with her hip. "Riku! Focus, man!"

"What?"

She rolled her eyes. "God, you're such a space case," she laughed. She pointed at the recipe, even though the book had been opened so infrequently that it was already half closed again. Riku flattened it. "What's it say now?"

"Did you add the milk?"

"Yup."

"Okay. It says...it says to take a walnut-sized spoonful of batter and like, spread it out on the grill thing."

She stared at the batter, the consistency of which was much closer to soup than it was to dough, and Riku wondered exactly how much of that constituted a walnut.

"Um," Kairi said. "Does it mean the inside of a walnut, or like, with its shell on and everything?"

"I dunno," Riku said. "Maybe it wants you to find the mean of the average volume of a shelled walnut and the average volume of an unshelled one."

"Doof," she mumbled, making a move to slingshot a tablespoon-full of batter at him but dropping it on the pan instead. Purposefully, Riku assumed.

* * *

"I know it's upsetting, since Mom and Dad died. I mean, there have been a bunch of changes -"

"I'm not upset! Okay? And if I were, it wouldn't be about - about them. Okay?"

"You're acting upset."

"...maybe I just changed. People change, Sora."

Sora sighed. "It's a big deal, Roxas. I mean, parents aren't supposed to just - like that. And then all this stuff happened and - "

"So what?" Roxas spat, "Everybody _dies_, Sora."

And Sora - _winced_, visibly, or at least flinched and closed his eyes and prayed to the highest cloud in heaven that nobody in this room besides the chef spoke fluent French. He turned to face his brother and he felt awful. Because he'd had a _sex dream_ while his little brother was in the room. Because before and, briefly, after, he'd realized he'd had a sex dream with his brother in the room, he'd contemplated - masturbation, which - which was a totally normal healthy teenage boy thing to do but Roxas was _right there_ in the room!

His shoes pinched his feet. Sora's socks were too big and his sneakers were too small, so they pinched his toes, but he was afraid of breaking them since he'd already had to duct-tape the fronts back together. Which didn't make any sense, but still. So he breathed in and looked at Roxas.

Roxas had been born with red hair. Really pale strawberry blond. That was one of the only things Sora remembered about Roxas-baby, which was what they called him. Roxas-baby and Sora-kid, both of who really liked the baby goats at the petting zoo, and when Roxas was born he always kicked off all of the sheets in his cradle and Sora always wrapped himself up tight in a cocoon of blankets.

They didn't know it, but they'd reversed their sleeping habits now.

_Everybody dies, Sora._

It was one of those truths that was so obvious it didn't even mean anything and made Sora feel like puking.

They were related, alright.

"Roxas - " he felt a little silly staring so seriously at Roxas-baby, even if Roxas-baby had grown three inches in the last year and had the cheekbones to match. "I'm sorry. I'm not placating you. I mean - I mean duh, I'm not. Like...it sucks, I know that. But whatever is wrong, you can tell me, right? That whole blood is thicker than water thing. I love you."

"Sap." But Roxas was smiling, even if it was just a little bit.

Sora was terrible at giving Roxas pep talks. He was really awful. The few times it'd happened before, his words hadn't helped at _all_. Once they made it worse. But Sora was an older brother who cared enough to give shitty pep talks.

And Sora knew that Roxas was just an insecure puppy. Brother is a thick word.

* * *

"Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere."  
- **W. Somerset Maugham**

* * *

After that, it turned out it was surprisingly hard to meet up with kids from not-your-class-trip during the day. Roxas and Axel checked into their motel and Axel expressed extreme disinterest in formally stalking the Destiny Island Senior Year French Class Trip from museum to museum, which meant dragging Roxas to a book store and asking him what all of the titles meant before pissing him off enough to get him to just pick up a book at random and sit in the chair in the corner.

And Riku didn't know what arctic meant and he kept thinking about it. He figured he must have had a mind like that. He focused on things, probably.

Arctic arctic arctic. Like it was a riddle. Like it meant something, or like Riku needed it to mean something.

And Axel was the guy who killed the moth.

It made Riku feel so sick he wanted to get sucked into the pit of his stomach, and he was being forced to use his two hours of free time before dinner to go and talk to more people. People he never ever wanted to _see_ because Destiny Island was big but at least it was _closed_, and he'd kind of looked forward to reading a book in their room or watching a DVD on Sora's laptop and making fun of the characters before they talked.

(What was really funny was that Riku was disgustingly good at predicting the lines before they were said in the movies. The protagonist would say "Jack, I...I don't know if..." and then trail off for a while, so Riku would add in a high-pitched voice: "I don't know if I can do this anymore, Jack!" And dammit if five seconds later she didn't say just that. It happened all the time. It made Sora crack up because he was terrible at it. And Riku thought that was odd.)

Riku felt like talking to Roxas was like meeting the parents. Only when you'd never met the Parents, anyone's Parents, in that regard, it was hard to draw the comparison at all.

Riku stuck his hands in his new-jacket-pockets and followed Sora down the sidewalk. Sora walked like he always knew where he was going. At first, on the island, Riku had thought that it was because he'd already gone to and from school, to and from the ice cream place, to and from the movie store, repeatedly before. But Sora had said he'd never been to Annecy. And he walked like he knew exactly where he was going.

Which Riku thought was disgustingly fitting and kind of painfully obvious and a little obnoxious, which seemed about right. Because who was he to mock? He was following the guy. He had no idea where they were.

It wasn't snowing anymore.

It was sunny in short bursts like soft lightning, and you could watch the shadow of a cloud creep up in front of you like sludge, moving with a slow, almost disturbingly distinct line forward forward forward until it was officially cloudy, and Riku glanced up now at the sun. It was a pale smudge behind a moving cloud.

So when the sun came back it was like watching light ooze over the buildings ahead of you and couldn't come fast enough, even though you were walking toward it, until you two were in its line of movement and Riku was in the sunlight again. He felt that vague warmth again, the kind that only happens if you sit in front of a sunny window and read a book until your back feels golden.

It was almost enough to distract him, the dizzying changes which really only happened once every five minutes.

So when they went into the bookstore, Riku let Sora do the talking.

"Hey," Sora half-jogged up to Roxas, swung an arm around his shoulders, "Whatcha reading?" He said it in English, which confused Riku a lot.

Roxas was standing, with a sweatshirt and jeans, looking a few years older than he was, in front of one of the bookshelves. He had a thin paperback in his hand and he was reading the author biography on the last page.

Roxas looked at Sora, held up the book so his brother could see the cover, then went back to reading.

Which fucking scared Riku.

Because he did that.

Not to Sora, but to everyone else. He didn't like to be interrupted when he was reading. So he held up the book, let them read the title, didn't say a word, usually didn't even lift his eyes from the page. More to prove a point to the nosy asker than because he was oh-so-engrossed in his book, but still.

Fucking shit. That wasn't the reason Sora liked him, was it? He shook his head. Of course not. Nobody wanted to date their little brother.

Roxas said something in French, very quickly to Sora who grinned at him and stuck his tongue out again. And Roxas rolled his eyes.

Riku wasn't really oblivious. Roxas Orcot-Goodwin, Orcot because they'd adopted him and Goodwin because he was born with it and wouldn't let go, glared at Riku, made sure he couldn't understand what Roxas was saying, ignored him, and took every opportunity to make sure Riku knew that _Roxas_ was the brother. And had superiority. Had definition in Sora's life.

But the thing about acting like you don't care either way about anybody is that, usually, the only reason a person might do it is because he doesn't care either way about anybody and likes it that way.

Riku had thick skin.

But he couldn't shake the feeling that Roxas had something of his; something that Riku had too, right now, a trait or a thought. He recognized the quietness. It was not Riku's quietness of ten months ago. It was Riku's quietness of three years ago, when he discovered that high school cliches were true and, subsequently, lost interest in the whole of the world because it had lost interest in him.

And Roxas probably felt differently. Not so much apathy as...abandonment, maybe. How were you supposed to feel, when your parents were dead and you'd been at your friend's house? And now you were being sent somewhere to speak a language you couldn't. How did that feel? Riku couldn't imagine it for a second. Like reading a fantasy book.

Dragons were all well and good, but Riku had never seen a dragon, so he didn't care if the hero felt afraid. Because he didn't know what it felt like to have a giant lizard breathing down your neck. He didn't care to find out.

So for all he knew, Roxas was just an asshole. And Riku wondered why it was, exactly, that he was trying to find excuses for him to _be_ an _asshole_.

Riku didn't know anything at all. He didn't know why people did what they did. He couldn't understand them and it killed him. Like he'd missed the class on how to be a good human being.

Maybe everyone felt that way.

He shook his head. He really just wanted to go watch DVDs on a laptop, or read a cheesy book, or something. He looked around.

The bookshop was full of things. Books, mostly, and book accessories like bookmarks, or covers, or special collector's editions of books nobody had even read the first time. All in French. _L'Homme invisible_, said one title.

It was hard to miss Axel's hair. It was hard to believe that anyone really looked like that. The red poked up over the bookshelves like a billboard on a highway.

"Hey Riks?" Riku switched his gaze to the side to stare at Sora, who had a hand on his arm. The hand was warm. It was bumpy from a skin graft. But it was warm.

"What?"

"I gotta talk to Roxas about something really quickly, so can you like...go distract Axel?" He grinned.

"Distract Axel so Axel doesn't interrupt, or so I don't?"

And Sora made a sort of joking helpless face, wide eyes, shrugged, and Riku switched his gaze to Roxas really quickly and thought about how funny it was that they looked exactly the same and didn't at all. He could not see himself kissing Roxas. Ever. For one, kid was fifteen. Sixteen? Still. Even thinking about it made him sick.

He remembered thinking about kissing Sora. In the hospital, after the surgery. Not romantically or anything. Just sort of...lean down, lips-lips, to see what it felt like, and he knew what it felt like now. It felt warm and made it hard to breathe.

Riku mouth-shrugged and fiddled with a piece of lint in his jacket pocket. Did Sora really think he'd end up talking to Axel? Like, a conversation?

This was maybe the tenth time he'd been in a bookstore in his life. He always went to the library, and when he _did_ have to buy a book, like for school or something - it was easier to buy it online or to just get Mom to drop by the bookshop and get it for him on her way back from an errand or something. When he was a little kid he'd go into the bookstore with his brothers while their family waited for a table to open up at a restaurant, but that was pretty much it.

Being told to talk to your boyfriend's resentful little brother's twenty-one-year-old best friend was eerily similar to being introduced to relatives you didn't know you had and then being expected to make polite conversation. Yes, you had a thread of people who connected you. You did not really have anything else in common.

If it were a stranger Riku had been told to talk to, sure, that would have been better. If you said something weird to a stranger you could just walk away. No strings.

If Riku said something weird and socially awkward to Axel (_again_, his mind courteously added) then Axel told Roxas and really, Riku didn't want that kid angrier than he was.

Axel apparently did not speak French. At all. Even a little bit. He was holding one of the books that had been set atop the shelf, a this-just-in of literature, upside down and peering with squinted eyes at the inside jacket. Upside-down.

Riku considered a sarcastic comment, "I don't think that's how they read books in France, man," but realized that maybe even false hostility was not the best option right now.

He felt very proud of himself for coming up with a reason not to say anything besides 'I don't want to talk'.

"Oh! Hey, Riku, right?" Axel grinned at him, snapped the book shut and set it back on the stand.

"Yeah," Riku stayed a good few feet away.

"So you're Japanese or what?"

"My mom." Which was more than he would have given anyone last year, at least.

"Cool," Axel nodded. Haha, said Riku's mind, what eerie deja vu. He didn't really care. "Your mom lets you dye your hair like that?"

"What?" Riku asked, genuinely confused. It made him feel a little embarrassed to not have a clue what this guy was talking about. He couldn't tell at all, actually, because he was over thinking things. He didn't really know. Maybe he'd convinced himself that a twenty-one-year-old guy automatically knew more than him about everything.

"Your hair," Axel waved one hand around his own head and fisted it in his own hair. "Your parents are fine with you dying it?"

He blinked. "I don't - uh, don't dye it."

"Oh," Axel frowned. "So you're like...one of those people whose hair turned gray at like fourteen? That must suck."

Apparently whatever face Riku made had Axel widening his eyes and held his hands up defensively. "I mean not that it's bad or anything! I'm, uh, sorry if I offended you or something, like..."

"No, it's fine."

The world was not a ten-meter-tall tree.

It wasn't that it was _sometimes_ not a ten-meter-tall tree, Riku realized with a laugh, it just _wasn't_. Everything you said was a screw-up. Evolution was basically the process of screwing up and using it to your advantage.

That was fucking stupid. He was thinking completely stupid shit. But he was thinking it, not saying it, and safe inside his little skull-shell, it didn't matter, did it? He shook his head and laughed again. "It's really fine. I was born like this. People on the island just are, sometimes."

Axel grinned a shit eating grin, and Riku felt like he hadn't seen very many of those lately for some reason. "No kidding? The whole keeping-da-island-blood-strong thing?" He nodded, "I respect that." He sounded sort of sarcastic. "Yeah, I remember Roxas telling me about how his brother had moved to an island...what was it called again?"

It was things like that. Riku was confused. Axel mentioned "his brother had moved to an island," so was it okay to talk about the adopted thing? Since assuming that Axel knew about that, were you allowed to? And if you were allowed to, _should _you? It was common ground, right?

Riku didn't understand small talk. He was getting better at it; when Belle started that awkward little talking-to-Sora's-friends thing while Sora was doing something. "So, how's school?" And if you just said "good" then there was a long silence before she thought about something else to ask you, which was more invasive. So you said "Oh, it's pretty good. We have to write an essay about the symbolism in the play we're reading for English, though," and when you talked about school with a parent that was good.

Riku had gotten off his high horse and now he was stuck in a maze of social boundaries and he couldn't see over the walls.

"Uhm," Riku had almost forgotten the question. "Destiny Island," he said absently, keeping his eyes on the spines of the books.

Axel snorted and grinned wider. "Seriously? 'Destiny Island'?"

"Yeah..." Riku said apprehensively.

Axel laughed, cackled like an old lady telling gossip. "Doesn't that seem a little - " met with Riku's confused, oblivious, where-do-babies-come-from stare, "Destiny Island. _Where all your dreams come true_! Doesn't that seem kind of...like..._Disney_ to you?" He laughed again.

"Destiny isn't about _dreams_, though," Riku said, and frowned. He didn't know why he said that. It was probably a dumb thing to say, if you ever said just what you were thinking. "I mean, destiny is supposed to just be stuff that happens to you, without...like, without you interfering. Stuff that just happens. So it's not dreams."

And then Axel desperately looked like he wanted Riku to relax, because he was joking around, and Riku was clearly taking him too seriously.

Axel was, just then, honestly wondering if maybe Riku had a minor social disorder and, if he did, Axel was going to feel _really_ bad. Who gave a shit whether he said dreams or destiny? He was just poking fun at the name of an island.

Or at least that's what Riku guessed.

And he was proud of himself, for at least making the effort to guess, because even if it was wrong it _sounded_ plausible, right?

"Ah, yeah," Axel corrected himself. "I guess that's a definite difference..." He smiled a weak, awkward smile.

Riku cleared his throat the way his grandfather did; aherm-erm-a_hem_, though he'd always hated it when his grandpa did that. Even as a little kid, he'd known that _nobody_ had that much stuck in their throats. But it felt good to make a noncommital noise.

"It's a pretty cheesy place though," he said this like it was a peace offering. "I mean it isn't really big enough for people to bother with attacking, so it's never been in any wars. But apparently the European asshat who discovered it was...um, a total religious zealot, um, and he believed that God's 'destiny' for him was like...to discover the island, or something."

And because Axel was looking at him strangely, "I mean, I think. I mean my dad told me that a while ago. But I mean, he could have just been lying to me."

Axel shrugged and pulled out a big cookbook with a picture of a fancy decorated smoothie on the cover. "So if your mom's Japanese, does that make your dad a native?"

Riku blinked. "Native?"

"Yeah, 'cause you said the white hair was like..."

"Oh." Riku blinked and shook his head.

He didn't - well. He just didn't remember it being this awkward with Sora. Or Kairi, really. They'd treated him like..._like I was a conversation amateur,_ he thought and smiled. Like he didn't know what he was doing. Which was true.

Because apparently he said awkward things during small talk. Riku didn't really think about what he said before he said it, he realized. Like those people he hated.

He felt like he didn't want to talk to anyone he hadn't already talked to. Didn't want to bridge any new magical gaps, as it were. He had enough bridges, he had two, and that was plenty. He could just about say anything to Sora, he realized, which was a weird way of thinking about things. That if you maybe had a thing you wanted to say, you had somebody to tell, instead of someone you could just joke with and - that was it.

Riku felt like one of those people he hated. Really proud of himself for figuring something out a bunch of people had figured out before him.

So he figured maybe he was a two-friend kind of person. Couldn't handle too many of them. It was too hard to make friends, and he was fine with it, even if it meant having fucking awkward conversations with your boyfriend's little brother's twenty-one-year-old best friend.

"Yeah," he said. He felt nice inside. "My dad's family goes way back. Like, he thinks that maybe even before the explorer guy landed there he had ancestors there, 'cause me and all of my brothers have white hair."

He almost laughed when he said that. Because his whole goddamn family had been stuck on the dry half of the island for about a million years, seemed like.

"Wow," said Axel, "That's kind of cool. I guess the whole white-hair-exotic-island-accent thing must get you a lot of chicks, huh?" He chuckled at his own joke and put the book back.

Something in Riku clicked and he didn't say anything else. He didn't want to. He didn't have to, he could pick up a book and become engrossed, because maybe it wasn't all him because he had a feeling he wouldn't get along with Axel, anyways. And Roxas did.

After a long pause, "Oh, right. Obviously not. Never mind." He looked at Riku who looked back at him. Didn't glare, but just looked, like an unnerving toddler hoisted on a parent's shoulder staring at you across the subway.

"I'm not, uh, homophobic or anything, don't worry," he assured Riku. "I totally get it, w-well like, I have a coworker who's gay, so-o..." A four-year age gap seemed small. Riku wasn't as tall as this Axel guy but he could level him in a staring contest pretty easy.

"It's fine," Riku said. "And you just picked up a Danielle Steel novel." (1)

* * *

Sora waited a little while, watched the greying sky outside.

He really liked bookstores; he remembered going on a vacation with his family once, and some jerk had double-parked them. And it wasn't so bad, because it was summer, and Roxas and he had smelled like the sunscreen-bugspray-sweat amalgamation of every kid at summer camp. He remembered it. Oil and sharp offensive deet.

And oh, it turned out that the car preventing them from leaving belonged to a guy who was currently out on a tour-guided nature hike, so they had had about three and a half hours with no plans in a tiny useless town.

So their parents went to a coffee shop, 'experience the culture of the town,' all of that. Ten-year-old-Roxas and twelve-year-old-Sora ran away to the bookshop next door.

Three hours spent with your knees draped over the back of a chair and your head almost on the floor, reading a book and periodically glancing at your brother to see if he'd gotten further in his than you had in yours. Feeling the blood rushing to your head but not changing your position because Roxas was in the same one and he didn't look like he was moving, and you couldn't be the one to break first.

Sora remembered that. Not in a sad way, really. It wasn't like it was going to happen again anyways. But this book store felt the exact same; small shelves for little books, just a room and a register for people who didn't have anything better to do.

And Roxas had drawn out a thick paperback and was reading the quotations of praise on the inside.

"Are you seriously _still_ only reading fantasy books, Rox?" he asked, smiling at the dragon on the cover.

"No," Roxas said. "I'll read anyzing zat's good enough now." He said the 'now' like it was a pointed, angry word, even though it had no points. N-a-o-w, the tip of the tongue to the top of the palette and round the mouth and end with a puckering, but no sharp noises. He made the entire word sound like the point of a sword.

"O-oh," Sora said. "That's cool." He clicked his tongue and smiled at nothing in particular. He scanned the books on the shelf. Dust covered the tops of most of them. "I remember when you were a little kid, and you refused to read any books that _one_, didn't have magic and dragons, _two,_ had a girl for a protagonist because girls were 'icky,' and _three_, didn't involve an adventure or quest of some kind."

"Yes," Roxas grunted. "I remember. But I read uzzer kinds too, now."

As if to prove his point, he put the fantasy book back and pulled out a young adult novel.

Sora groaned inwardly. Because Roxas was in one of his Moods. "So, Axel's...twenty-one, right?"

"Yes," Roxas's eyes flicked to Sora, an electric flash which Sora didn't feel at all. It was the way Riku looked at him when he was listening to his iPod. _I'm busy being unhappy and antisocial_, it said.

"Does he...have a lot of friends his age?" He knew he was pushing his luck, speaking to Roxas in English.

"Ze circus moves around a loot," Roxas said, shoving the book back into place. Sora glanced up at Riku and Axel, across the room, but Axel was doing the same thing. Pulling out books and putting them back in.

"Yeah," Sora said. "But...?"

"'e 'as friends in ze circus," Roxas was still talking and he shot a glare at his older brother. "Zere is...euh. Zere is Demyx. And...'e and Larxene are friends, I zink...well, maybe...I don't zink 'e likes Marluxia, zough."

"Is Demyx a boy or a girl?" Sora asked nervously.

"A boy," Roxas said. "Zhey share a trailer." He smiled at this. "But eet's a small one."

"Cool," Sora told him. He wondered how subtle it would be to ask if Axel had a girlfriend. Or if Roxas knew he was straight. Or if Roxas knew whether or not he was a really patient pedophile with a penchant for blonds.

Sora knew it was weird for an adult to befriend a child to such a degree. Wondered if it was really worth worrying about.

"Riku seems cool," Roxas said, in a way that suggested he didn't really think that. He flicked his eyes away from his brother who believed in God.

"Aw, don't let him fool you," Sora laughed and slung an arm around Roxas's shoulders. "He's a total doof."

Roxas winced.

'Doof,' like what Sora had called his dog. It wasn't okay. Roxas knew fucking nothing but it wasn't okay. Riku-guy was nobody, and that was final. He was Sora being unfair. He was Sora becoming island-Sora and not France-Sora even though Roxas was still France-Roxas.

"'e's your boyfriend, right?" Roxas almost said it without an accent. But he was bad at his H's and he was bad at his th's.

"Um..." What surprised Roxas most was the pause. The "um." Sora smiled. "Yeah, he is. But he's almost as antisocial as you are, so don't let him hear you say that." His brother winked at him, but Roxas blinked a few times and frowned at him.

"Antisocial?" was his one-word question.

"Yeah," Sora didn't even skip a beat, "It means...like you don't want to be around people. Or, you don't like people."

"I like people," Roxas said. He didn't like how much he sounded like a first-year English student. 'I like dogs. My name is Roxas. I am fifteen years old. My favorite color is red.'

"I know," Sora grinned, "But not a lot of them."

Roxas, not wanting to give Sora the satisfaction, just shrugged.

Something was broken.

Something.

Ouch.

He stared at Sora really, really hard. He looked so little, Sora thought, he looked so small, like a fifteen-year-old kid for once. He had a sort of baby face when he was sad. Roxas stared at Sora who stared back.

And Sora felt like crap. Roxas had never been his best friend; they weren't those brothers that looked out for each other and told each other secrets and had "sleepovers" in each other's rooms. But Roxas was his _brother_, and Sora had been so happy on the island.

And Roxas was so not.

And Sora couldn't do anything, and he realized with a start that he liked talking to Riku more than he liked talking to his brother. Which, in any other case, was fine. But Sora couldn't get rid of that niggling fear: if it starts like this it will grow like a tumor, soon you forget you have any other family, soon you are telling people your home is Destiny Island and Mom and Dad are gone and maybe Roxas too.

Sora was a touchy-feely person.

He really really wanted to hug Roxas.

He wanted to apologize for the abandoning and the loving another boy and Hell, the making his kid brother so lonely he befriended a circus worker only there one month in the year, but Roxas was staring at him.

Sora rubbed the back of his neck.

"Love you," he said awkwardly.

Roxas nodded. "Me too," he said.

Nobody left the bookstore all too terribly happy, but not terribly sad, either.

Things were cracked; not enough to need a do-over. Just enough to need a little bit of tape, maybe. Horribly painfully beautifully inescapably cracked like a skin graft, two kisses from your boyfriend's lips and it was all better.

* * *

"Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence."  
- **Elihu Burritt**

* * *

They dawdled on the way back, the four of them. Riku wanted nothing more than to go back to his room, where there weren't any strangers and there weren't any little brothers (besides himself), watch a DVD or read a book or just _sleep_. Whatever the Hell they wanted.

Axel left before Roxas. Needed a run, he said. Felt like he hadn't done a damn thing today besides sit and stand, he said. Had to keep up the muscles or the boss would demote him to popcorn-selling, he said.

Sora didn't let Roxas leave with him; kept a hand around his arm tightly, dragged him to the park, "I said we'd meet Zack and Kairi here! I dunno what we're gonna do there though, free time is over at six and it's like five-twenty now."

What they did there was Roxas was introduced to the two other kids, Riku nodded and smiled awkwardly and didn't say anything, and Roxas said as little as possible and with as little accent as possible.

Eventually Roxas went to sit on a bench leaning against the wall of an old public library. Which was kind of ironic in a way that wasn't really ironic at all.

And eventually Riku, who was feeling a little more self-assured after talking to Sora and Kairi and even holding a mostly-normal conversation with Zack, came to sit next to him because the bench was the only quiet place he could sit.

Roxas bristled.

"What's it like, in England?" Riku asked suddenly, and he didn't ask it in that horrible placating see-look-you-can-be-relevant-too way. He asked like he actually wanted to know the answer, and like he thought Roxas could tell him.

But Roxas knew better. He knew how easy it was to fake sincerity; he did it all the time, hell!

But he answered. "It's a lot like it is 'ere, I guess," he said, very carefully so that he didn't have an accent. (A part of him didn't want Riku to have the satisfaction.) It was about true. The streets looked the same, though the people weren't as friendly, and he supposed a guy from an island wouldn't be able to tell the difference. "I like it better 'ere than there, though." He didn't bother with the H's. He bothered with the th's, though.

Riku nodded. Roxas noticed he had taken his watch off and it was in his hands; he was playing with it, curling it up and letting it go with his wrists resting on his bent knees.

"What's it like on Destiny Island?" Roxas asked obligatorily, because at least Riku knew when to shut up, even though Sora had blabbed Roxas's freaking ears off about the place.

Riku glanced to the side and looked away when Roxas met his eyes, stared back at the park where Sora was talking to some of his other friends. Roxas kind of wished Axel hadn't claimed it felt creepy hanging out with so many teenagers in public and gone back to the bookstore.

Riku looked at the watch dangling from his hands between his knees, then to the opposite side, along the expanse of the wall.

"Lonely," he said.

Roxas nodded.

* * *

"Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be."  
- **Anton Chekhov**

**

* * *

**

"Hey," Sora said, "Turn on the laptop?"

"Mm," Riku dumped his backpack next to the door as soon as they stepped into the room. For the millionth billionth time in forever, they were too close and Riku could smell summer vegetables and clean dirt. Not like clean cold whitesnow. Brownclean.

The room they were staying in, Riku thought while he zipped open Sora's suitcase, looked a little bit like Sora's room at home. White and grey, only here there were crappy landscape drawings of flowers and rivers and things framed and hung on the wall. And the beds were skinny, because it was a dorm, not a hotel.

He tossed the computer on the bed they'd ended up sharing for the last few days (last night, at least, they'd had an excuse) and kneeled on the carpet to plug it into the wall. The outlet was underneath the nightstand.

"Hey, Peter Pan or Series of Unfortunate Events?"

"What?"

"What movie do you wanna watch?"

Riku scooted out from under the nightstand and unfolded himself, brushing off his knees. "Are you serious?"

Sora must have been expecting his reaction, should've remembered Riku's memory like an elephant and that Mr. Reno had offered them this choice in book form last year. He must have thought it was just so cute to do that.

Riku rolled his eyes and crawled belly-down onto the bed. He grunted.

Sora crowed, "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" and leapt onto the bed, feet-first, bouncing. "Peter Pan it is."

Riku started and grabbed the laptop so it didn't just slide right off the covers. Gee, Sora, thanks for that.

--

Halfway into the movie and Sora wouldn't shut up.

"I wonder what happens if you think something bad when you're flying. Like - what if they have a war? And you're flying around and all of a sudden 'Oh no! What if Chippy was killed by pirates!' Do you sink?"

"Shh! Shut up!"

"What?"

"There's - "

The door creaked; shadows interrupted the light seeping in through the bottom. The door opened so slowly Riku felt like he was in a horror movie; _creeaaak_, "Boys?"

They were on the same bed boys didn't share beds this looks really suspicious and everyone's gonna talk, offered his exhausted paranoia.

"Yes, Mr. Russell?" Sora was actually a pretty good liar. Riku was very slowly figuring this out. With the hand thing, and the being mostly-okay on the anniversary of his parents' death, and the interacting with people, he was a good liar because he wanted to believe so badly that they were truths. So Riku shut up and let Sora lie for them both.

"It's almost ten thirty, you should turn the lights out soon."

"Yeah, okay. The movie's almost done, anyways," Sora grinned. It was true, it was over halfway done. "We're even watching it with French subtitles!"

Mr. Russell smiled weakly at them, reminded them to be quiet, and left. Just like that.

"Boy," Sora said, "That guy always kinda gives me the creeps."

There were no lights on besides the one from the computer; the blinds were drawn against the disappointingly yellow light, the hallway lamps switched off, the world liquid dark and Sora was only the lit parts of his face.

Riku blinked, tiredly; the glow of the screen almost felt like it was burning his eyes.

He ran the palm of his hand over one eye, which made it a little blurry, and he waited for it to clear while he watched Wendy and Peter and the fairies. The sound coming from the laptop was tinny, static, but that was to be expected. It wasn't really the greatest laptop, after all.

A goddamn moth landed on the screen. A tiny one. Different species. Fucking shit.

It needed to stop. Riku was going insane.

Sora laughed, wrinkled his nose, and whispered: "Wow! She's really beautiful!"

And of course Sora would call the moth a she, Riku mused. And he was right.

She was beautiful. It was only her silhouette they could see; two petals, fuzzy at the very edges, with a head peaking between their tips. Two long antennae, like hairs, stuck straight out to the to the side and her tiny thin legs rested on the screen, warped by the pixels. She fluttered a little, landed higher up on the screen, and Riku leaned in so close he fancied he could _smell_ her. The smell was dusty brown, animalistic but civilized like an old stack of adventure books.

Sora didn't swat at the moth. Didn't crush it against the screen, shoo it away, blow a stream of air across the tiny crack between its wings. He let it be.

Riku fell half-asleep before the movie was over, before the moth flew away, head resting in the bent crook of his elbow. He stirred little when Sora shut the laptop, dragged it off the bed, set it down on the floor and crawled back in.

It was nice and warm.

Riku felt like he had on long car trips to the opposite end of the island. After an hour of watching telephone poles get closer and closer and farther and farther, trailing his eyes along the wires _up_ and _down_ in their swoops like hypnosis.

Felt sleepy and satisfied in a dull way.

--

He didn't really _fall_ asleep, as it were. He sort of did, but always felt a little conscious, just a tiny little bit. The very lightest kind of sleep.

So two knees pressing into his sides, a weight on his lower belly, hot air like steam in his face; he opened his eyes easily.

"Hey," Sora breathed, half his face lit by blue light. Must have opened the blinds.

"Nn," Riku grunted against his boyfriend's mouth. Sora was hunched over him, biting his lip.

Sora leaned in, kissed Riku very, very fully. "Feel like I haven't seen you all day," he muttered, wrapping his arms around Riku's neck and sitting up, pulling Riku with him.

"Yeah, I guess so," Riku said before they started kissing again.

Like watching the telephone wires between telephone poles while your mom drives past the graveyard and you try to pretend that you're not holding your breath.

Riku sucked air in narrowly through his nostrils, kept his eyes closed and his mouth set openly on Sora's. Let his hands wander up into the thick, coarse, wiry brown hair, so harshly divisioned. Felt good on his hands. Felt good.

A tongue tickling the roof of his mouth, and a gentle traveling pressure over his shirt as he realized he was holding Sora to his lap. Sora didn't seem to mind.

Sora's happylight devilfingers danced over his bare collarbone curiously, set Riku's lower abdomen hungry. Felt good. Bareskinonbareskin.

Riku decided to try it, because Sora had gone first, anyways. Let one hand slide out of his hair, down the feltgoodwarm of the t shirt on Sora's back. Paused and ran his fingers over the bump of the base of his spine. Sora made a happy noise, like a sort of warm grunt in Riku's mouth and did something nice with his tongue. Feltgood.

Feeling braver, Riku snuck his thumb under Sora's shirt, grazed it over the bare skin of his hip. Felt good, stuck a little with sweat that cooled in the winter air.

Sora smiled, kissed more; dug his hands so far into Riku's hair his fingers grazed Riku's scalp. Goodsign? Feltgood.

Riku reluctantly let his other hand trail out of Sora's wiry hair, over his shoulder, down to the otherhip. Both thumbs up under Sora's pajama shirt, brushing against skin and boysweat, all the while breathing through his nose.

Sora groaned and broke the kiss, rolled his eyes. "Gosh," he grumbled, grabbing the hem of his own shirt in both hands. "I can tell this is going to take you forever."

Waitwaitwait, Riku's brain said, toofastnonono.

Riku's brain stopped saying things, then, when Sora pulled his own shirt over his head. And balling it up in one hand, Sora was caught by Riku's eyes like a fly in a web, frozen, about to drop his shirt on the floor, straddling his boyfriend's hips, chest exposed, frozen.

Riku was still panting a little from the kiss.

His mind was reeling like a wheel mounted on a wall. Spinspinspinning and not going anywhere. There was a lot of prettypretty skin. Sora dropped the shirt, eventually, readjusted so he was sitting evenly on Riku, let his fingers dance over Riku's collarbone again. His touch was disgustingly amazingly beautifully breath-quickeningly light, like a butterfly landing on your arm. Like a moth landing on a computer screen. Tickled, like Riku's skin was rising to meet Sora's fingers.

Sora quirked at him a quiet little smile, let Riku take his time as he ran his eyes very slowly up and down most of Sora's body. Embarrassing as it was, all he could think:

_HolyshitSorahasnipples._

He tried not to think it but it thought itself. He made a snerk noise, at which Sora rolled his eyes, fisted his featherlight devilfingers in Riku's shirt and pulled him forward for another kiss.

Riku was starting to feel that sort of cruel, guilty happiness that happened when you blew into the straw of your soda and made wet, sticky bubbles while your mom hissed at you to _please_ behave in the restaurant. IcanandIwillbecauseIwantto.

Long and slow and lazy, took his time, distracted Riku while Riku's hands of their own volition came up and rested on Sora's waist, ran down his belly, halted like frightened horses when Sora's hands snuck up under Riku's shirt.

He broke away. "I – I don't, sorry, I – "

Sora laughed, shifted in his seat, set his palm against Riku's forehead. "I know," he said, and kissed Riku on the cheek. Very chaste. "I know you can't, silly. It's Tuesday."

* * *

When Riku woke up, slowly, aware of the boy next to him making nightmare sounds – he decided that sex dreams were the very worst kind of nightmare.

* * *

(1) If you haven't heard of Danielle Steel, consider yourself lucky. But she writes (wrote?) bodice-rippers. I haven't read any but...oh come on. Pop-culture reference. Give me some credit here.

A/N: Hosnap.

Riku has a sexuality?

Who knew? I didn't.

I'm trying to drink leftover Gatorade. It smells like cleaning fluid and looks like glow-in-the-dark camel piss.

Orders of business:

1) Someone made a Rain Shadow playlist. I don't know if she's comfortable with me giving out her screen name, or with me posting the list of songs n' such, so um, wonderful-person-who-made-playlist, would you be comfortable with that? Either of those things? y/y?

2) Dang. I totally had a number two. I forgot. Uh...there's a poll on my profile? Go check it out? OH! Um. Long chapter. Longer than before. And there was redheadedness. And um. Adult-type touching.

so tell me what you thought of that please don't be mean?

* * *


	15. Life is the Plot

* * *

**And There Is No Solution.**

**

* * *

**

A/N: Okay, orders of business.

(edit: UH. Forgot to switch chapter for beta'd one. Fail much? Yes, it's a hobby of mine, but the clubs are too exclusive and I've been waitlisted.)

1) It was CherryFlavoredChalk! She made the playlist! Too late to take it back now, babbie, it's going up (copy and paste, for the win?):

RAIN SHADOW: A CONSTRUCTION OF MUSIC

"The Owls Go"-Architecture in Helsinki  
"I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light"-Brand New  
"Let the Drummer Kick"-Citizen Cope  
"Lazy Eye"-Silversun Pickups  
"Young Folks"-Peter Bjorn and John  
"Fireflies"-Owl City  
"Fuck Was I"-Jenny Owen Youngs  
"Somebody To Talk To"-This Providence  
"And Darling"-Tegan and Sara  
"High of 75"-Relient K  
"I'm Not Crying. You're Not Crying, Are You?"-Dear and the Headlights  
"Push"-Marianas Trench  
(interjection: the Marianas Trench, home of Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the ocean! It's like...eleven kilometers? And now you know. Sorry. That was Nitlon. I'll shut up.)  
"The World At Large"-Modest Mouse  
"From Yesterday"-30 Seconds to Mars

2) Much thanks to ASKInfinity for beta'ing this in...one day? Less than a day; I finished it yesterday afternoon and she got it to me this morning. In short, if you find any typos they're _her fault_. Mmhm. So there.

Well they're...they're mostly my fault, but...look, the thing is 16,000 words _without_ the author's notes, what more do you want? Anyways.

This time, on RAIN SHADOW (I'm sorry I just really wanted to do this):

Sora decides Axel's NOT a child rapist, and Riku and Roxas metaphorically sniff each others' butts.

Oh, and Sora attempts to be KING OF THE LOG. -cough-

* * *

"Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself."  
- **Og Mandino**

**

* * *

**

It hurt.

Being there.

Stuck. Chained.

A steady swollen pressure in his throat like motion sickness.

Riku hated the two-dream nights.

Swollen, yes, like the air in his mouth had a shape to it, pungent and hot even when he woke up, because it was almost seven thirty and breakfast was being made. He could smell fried eggs, toast, cheap cereal from the cafeteria. Felt like he was going to puke.

He remembered the first dream, but not the second. He remembered the feelings from both. Fear, sharp, slashing. And the feeling under that, which he could remember but could not call forth because the word "sex" just wasn't registering right now.

Just a bad dream. Just a two-nightmare night. Back to back like brothers they had lined themselves up.

"Hey, are you alright?" Sora's fingers under the hinge of his jaw made him blink a few more times, forced the reality of a jaundiced ceiling with a stationary fan and the half a foot not covered by blankets. Freezing cold like a flesh Popsicle.

He drew his foot in to the oily heat of the blankets and closed one eye like a lazy cat. Stared at Sora with the eyes-the-color-the-sky-oughtta be. Sora snorted and smiled at him and didn't take his fingers away. "Bad dream?"

Riku shrugged lying down. "I guess," he said. He felt faded in the morning. Greasy, a wrinkle in the sheets digging into his back.

"What was it about?" Sora asked him. "Or can you tell me?"

'Can you tell me,' he asked, like he was afraid Riku had dreamed up a horrible secret, murdered someone in his sleep. 'Can you tell me,' like Riku didn't even have the ability to tell a story to the kid.

"I dunno," Riku said. "I don't really remember what happened."

"Oh…" Sora nodded and pressed his head into the pillow sleepily. "Yeah, I get that." He rolled over onto his tummy and started fingering the buckle on the watch that Riku hadn't remembered to take off before falling asleep. He usually didn't. Didn't mind it.

He'd forgotten to brush his teeth yesterday, too, or if he'd remembered he hadn't cared enough to do it. His teeth felt like fuzz.

"How when you dream a thing you only ever remember how it made you _feel_," Sora said. "Instead of what happened or, or why you felt like that." He paused. "I mean, that happens to me, anyways."

Riku tried to think of a polysyllabic reply and his silence was interrupted.

"I had a dream once," Sora started walking his pointer and middle fingers like legs across the pillow, "Where I stole…daffodils, or something, from this old lady's garden. I- I think they were daffodils. They were really, really bright yellow, and like everything in the dream that could be yellow was yellow," shifted so he was sitting up on his elbows. "And the old lady, she sent her Saint Bernard after me and I was being led back when I woke up."

Riku snorted and smiled at his friend, opening both eyes. Saw Sora-covered-in-morning. Ran a hand through his greasy morning hair. Touched Sora's coarse and clean morning hair, because he looked like a – like a…something. Riku wondered at that. Sora's head, with his hair, was a very distinctive shape, and reminded him of something in that awkwardly familiar way that made people think they had past lives. He didn't know _what_. Sora's hair was Sora-shaped. Spiky and divided and brown. Flopped like a seal when he bounced.

"I had a dream," Riku said, and snickered because he couldn't say that and not think about Martin Luther King, "When I was a little kid, where that villain from Aladdin pushed me off the side of a boat. Only we were in the harbor, so I just swam to the dock."

Sora and his brown head laughed.

Hair the color the Earth oughtta be, which made Riku laugh. He wasn't the color of anything.

Anything besides snow.

He was the boy who used SPF 55 sunscreen and always had, and he was paper white, snow white, pale as the thing he hadn't seen until he was seventeen years old and mostly gay.

He trailed his eyes over the dip between Sora's collarbones. Mostly _very_ gay.

"Hey," the back of his mind said suddenly with his mouth. Eyes dulled and buffed. "It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"

Sora blinked and scooted closer. "Is it?" He leaned over Riku to grab the cell phone on the bedside table. "Wow," he said appreciatively, staring at the date. Kneeling in bed wearing boxers and a t-shirt even though it was just barely above freezing. "Whaddaya know. I mean, I guess I knew, what with all the decorations and stuff, but I kind of didn't pay attention, you know?"

"Yeah," Riku said dumbly. He had remembered in a way that was not remembering. He had thought about it, briefly entertained the concept before allowing himself distractions. _I should get him a present_, before the usual selfishness of his mind settled in. Better things to do.

Life to live, people to talk to. No time for school, eh, boy?

He groaned and thumped his head against the mattress, which made it bounce a little and kind of defeated the purpose.

He stared at the cracks in the ceiling, which told him stories. He wondered if little French boys had stood on their tip-toes and scratched things up there with pencils before they were erased or wiped away. He remembered going to summer camp. Bunks covered with who was where when. Who to call for drugs.

His favorite one was "I was the first to write here. Jul. 12, 1996." That and _arctic._

He shivered. Like a mad scientist, _what does it **mean**!?_

"Um…" oblivious Sora lay back down and nestled close to his boyfriend. A sleepy waking up feeling hung between them on threads. "Do you want a present?"

"I didn't…I…" Riku figured honesty was the best policy. It wasn't a new thing. It was just that he didn't really have that many opportunities to lie. "I don't really have anything for you, y'know."

Sora shook his head. "Don't worry about it."

Which meant Riku was going to worry about it. Or, should worry about it. He didn't. Instead, he kissed Sora on the nose with his fuzzy slipper teeth then got up to go to the bathroom. He grabbed his plastic bag of soap and tiny shampoo and toothbrush and toothpaste and headed down the hall.

He had started to hate the bathroom. None of the doors on the cubicles closed enough to be locked. The shower curtains were white and almost see-through. There wasn't any place to put your towel where it wouldn't get wet; you had to just stick it in a safe corner and hope.

Dead bugs got caught in the lights. Not a lot, just enough to make a couple of speckles over the sink where Riku brushed his teeth. Tiny burnt black carcasses, perfectly preserved, tricked by the moon into being fried. Lying belly-up three feet over everyone's heads on the glass under a fluorescent bulb.

And Riku hated the two-dream nights.

* * *

"Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep."  
- **Fran Lebowitz**

**

* * *

**

Axel Turner was not a very good sleeper, he mused, massaging his scalp at about four in the morning. He had never had to wake up for anything at four in the morning, but he found himself awake at four in the morning half the mornings of his life. His secret hour. He and the farmers and the bakers woke up and farmed and baked and…Axel-ed. Mmhm.

Axel-ing pretty much consisted of twisting the sheets around your legs and tucking them under your back to form a sort of cocoon. And then when that got boring, you rolled, in your cocoon, onto your side to see if Roxas was awake and if you two could play cards.

Roxas, having a normal internal clock, was still fast asleep. A very messy sleeper, that boy. Axel crooked a grin at the thought; _messy_ was the right word for Roxas when he slept. He rarely had both legs under the covers, and his arms were spread like wings across the bed; always on his back and his hair drooped into his eyes. He drooled. It was a little bit gross, but Axel was used to it.

In the trailer. When Axel would sleep on the floor because Roxas had shown up after the show drenched like a pissy cat and demanded room and board because he told his foster parents he was sleeping at Pence's and didn't want to go home. _"You're my friend, aren't you? Well zhen give me ze bed." _And, after an affectionate pause, _"Dork."_

And you couldn't have two guys sleeping in the same _bed_. Well, you could, because Axel and Demyx had to, but that was different. You couldn't sleep on the floor of a moving trailer; things rattled and fell down no matter _how_ much duct tape you used.

Axel Turner was awake at four in the morning on Christmas Eve.

So he decided to go for a walk.

At four in the morning, on Christmas Eve, in a country whose language he didn't speak and in a city whose roads he didn't know. And when Axel thought about it, he realized that, yeah, that was just about par. He memorized no streets. Always-moving-Axel.

He yawned when he stepped outside the motel, at the cars whose windows were covered in a thin sheet of ice like tiny crystals.

He never really fell asleep. He tuned out. He went into power-save mode, but never lost awareness. Never-never-never, Roxas told him. It was like falling asleep in the car; not it-felt-like-I-woke-up-in-an-instant, but-I-know-it's-been-an-hour-and-I-am-now-opening-my-eyes. It was really incredibly tiring when you heard people talk about falling asleep and all Axel could do was drift on the surface of it like an unwanted buoy. He did not fall asleep, but when he stepped outside and got bitten by the cold monster, he fell awake.

He shook his head until his bed-hair evened out a little and covered his ears. His hair was cold, but not wet, so it helped a little bit.

When he reached the edge of the parking lot, he glanced guiltily back at the door with the rusty brass letters, _114._ Roxas Orcot-Goodwin (whose name still made Axel giggle) was like a shelter puppy. He had a thing about being abandoned. The first time he'd slept over Axel had slipped out early to get breakfast and come back to a panic attack. A nervous breakdown described in broken English and fists banging against walls. And some very awkward and very tight hugs.

But they'd gone to bed at eleven last night, and no sane person woke up after five hours of sleep, and Axel _really_ needed that walk. He was like an outdoor cat. He came back for food and sleep and petting. (And work.) But he had to stretch his legs, or they got itchy.

Roxas wouldn't wake up, and Axel would be back in an hour. Maybe two hours; it depended. He had a lot to sift through.

His construction-worker boots trapped snow in their ridges, and the sidewalks hadn't been plowed yet, so he walked on the curb in an odd replica of the tightrope walkers back home. "Home."

The only lights on were the 24-hour fast food restaurants and drug stores, big plastic signs on in parking lots light from behind. The streetlights were still on. They were bright white and spaced pretty closely together. Only twenty or so feet apart, because it was a busy street.

They gave Axel double-shadows. One from behind, and one from in front, they crisscrossed each other. They made Axel giggle because his spiky hairdo always translated well into shadows. Stretched out and on top of the stick of his body. His shadows looked like sparklers.

He played with his two fluorescent shadows and didn't think about anything. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to get them to touch. You had to lift _both_ arms so that the middle ones of the shadows could reach each other. And when you leaned the left one to reach the right one, the right one leaned away. And vice versa. He stood very carefully just between two streetlights and managed to get fingertips to touch. If he backed up a little, he could get palm-to-palm, and with some very careful maneuvering he slung one shadow's arm around the other's shoulders. That meant that the other shadow had one arm sticking out into nothingness, but still, Axel thought, it was pretty neat. Having your shadows give each other one-armed hugs. Like friends for lonely people.

He liked to walk down the roads that looked dark. For one, because usually you could see a lot more than it seemed like you could see, and it was his way of desensitizing himself to darkness. For two, it was a little exciting. Because he might see something nobody else did.

Fourteen roads and an hour later, the clouds in the sky were getting lighter. Between the apartment buildings Axel could see the grey sunrise, just tinted yellow at the edges. It seemed, at best, reluctant to give them light.

For a brief moment, he could have sworn he heard the sky groaning like the rusty door of a circus trailer. Like pulling the sun up by his armpits was something it didn't need to do. He fancied he felt the stretching, the moan, the lackluster colors of the dawn faded like an old man's beard. Tired and sick of it. He'd always thought that being center of the galaxy must have been a lonely thing. You never moved, ever.

At five in the morning he decided to head back. He doubted Roxas would be awake at six, but you never knew. Kid's schedule was…odd, on the best of days.

He ran a fallen awake hand through his fallen awake hair and, feeling distinctly unadventurous, turned around to go back the way he'd come. To walk along the same curbs, this time in tired and uninspiring early morning light, watching the very few brave early morning winter joggers jogging past tourist shops.

There were some songbirds, sparrows or something, grouped together on telephone wires. And a dead crow in the road, flattened almost beyond recognition. Axel was careful not to step on it.

And it took him almost three forks in the road and a car salesman ad he was _sure_ he would have remembered the first time before he realized he was actually lost. At five in the morning, on Christmas Eve, in a country whose language he didn't speak, and in a city whose streets he didn't know.

Because he was walking on autopilot. And now, whoop-dee-doo, he'd managed to get to a place where he couldn't see any street signs.

Axel kind of wasn't so much really a fan of not knowing where the hell you were. Or not being able to ask for directions. He looked around. To his right, the parking lot of a grocery store. To his left, a two-lane street with no cars, dark black with wet and the occasional drying grey spot. In front, sidewalk; in back, forks.

He didn't really fancy himself the kind of guy who was too stubborn to ask for directions, or anything. Of the many things that Axel and his Wonderful Imagination fancied about himself and others. But when you spoke _English_ and you were in _France_, there was a distinct language barrier erected. At five in morning it towered over him with a smirk.

"Um…" He thumbed the cell phone in his coat pocket, cold plastic like everything else, and considered his options. He didn't panic. He could call Roxas, but for one the kid was probably asleep and would just worry. He could call Demyx or someone else from the circus, but there was like a two hour time difference, wasn't there? So calling Demyx, who slept like a cat (like it was an Olympic event) and asking him to just Map-Quest it or something would either yield an answering machine or a very, very sleepy, angry Demyx.

He turned around to stare the first fork in the road straight on.

Or.

_Or_.

He smirked. He shivered in a freezing early-morning breeze. His ears felt like goddamn tingly human icicles, so he brought his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them. His fingertips felt incredibly hot and when his ears started warming up it was with painful tingling. And stung from the cold again when Axel replaced his hands.

He could just try and _guess_ his way back. (Because when you start off lost, it's hard to get loster. (1))

Axel then proceeded to try and guess his way back for about two hours, somewhat unsuccessfully.

* * *

And Roxas woke up alone. Alone in his bed, yes, that was a given – and a welcome one. But there was nobody else in the room, and he could _tell_. There was a tenseness that came with it; Roxas became hyper-aware of the noises he would make and his breathing. He would listen for Axel's breathing. The air felt…emptier? Lighter.

The beds were too big for one person. He could stretch his limbs out all the way and not reach the edges if he were lying in the middle. And they smelled bitter and unisex. He opened his eyes without ceremony, and found himself mostly on the right, one arm hanging off the side, legs spread and bent like a frog's, heart racing from some nightmare or other.

He opened his eyes without ceremony and looked at the empty bed across from him, lit by the sleepy sun in the window.

He glanced at the digital bedside clock. Seven in the morning.

Roxas sat up, brought his legs together and drew his knees up to his chest. He drew the generic, bitter, unisex stripes of the comforter up to his waist. Axel had never actually been out at seven before; it was usually earlier or much, much later. At night, that was. For some reason Axel just didn't like to walk in daylight; Roxas had asked him about it once and gotten a vague reply, something like "I'unno, sunlight feels too specific," which could have meant anything. Or nothing.

They mostly talked through email anyways.

He groaned, because he was always the most tired right after he'd gotten up, and slumped back down in the bed. Weird as he was, it was a good thing Axel was a social fucking butterfly. And a damn good friend. They'd known each other in person for – what, a month? Two months – before the circus had to move on. No, it was a month. A year of emails and two weeks of hanging out in the off-season and he was agreeing to go with Roxas to France for five days.

_And he paid for the rental car_.

So Roxas was not allowed to complain if his best friend wanted to go for walks irrationally early in the morning, because he had an unconditional friend who didn't laugh at his accent, but who did laugh at his abandoned-puppy reactions. _Neurotic_, he called Roxas, which was a word Roxas had yet to look up in a dictionary, but the way Axel said it made him think psycho. Or paranoid.

Outside, through the window and the gaps in the Venetian blinds, he could see a little evergreen tree and some generic bushes separating parts of the parking lot (which was cracked like a thousand tiny earthquakes). The little evergreen tree had some half-assed yellow Christmas lights on it, but they weren't switched on. Too bright outside for it to matter, he guessed.

The snow had melted on the sidewalk in little wet stains. Inside was clean and outside was leaf litter and mulch.

* * *

"When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable."  
- **Madeleine L'Engle**

**

* * *

**

"I think I've gone all the way through the circle of tolerable breakfast foods here," Kairi said, sitting down at their plastic cafeteria table. Riku, who was never that big on breakfast, was pretty much just picking at the muffin that came with Sora's food. Kairi had a tiny box of Cheerios.

"Huh?" Riku asked, tearing out a swollen purple blueberry and popping it in his mouth. He had some blueberry muffin stuck on the outside of his molars and tried to lick it off. Like his tongue was a shovel.

Kairi sighed. "I'm allergic to eggs, so I can't get most of the hot food, and I had oatmeal yesterday, and pancakes the day before that, and cereal the day before that! This place is super-limited."

"That's because normally the cooks have to cook for, like, hundreds of kids," Sora said. The leftmost prong of his plastic fork was bent and he hadn't gotten a knife, so cutting up his pancake was proving difficult. "So they have to just make a lot of the same thing."

"Yeah, I _know_, but it's still really boring," she said obstinately, tearing open the cardboard flaps. "Besides, I'm a teenager. I'm allowed to complain."

Riku shrugged and tore the top half of the muffin off of the bottom and offered her the bottom, which he had yet to bite. Little crystals of sugar on the top tickled his palm.

Kairi shook her head. "No," she smiled at him, "I'm fine with the cereal."

He knew it was irrational, but still felt a little insulted. He took the decline of his muffin bottom personally. The sincerity she switched to, the placating-doctor smile was like a relative's. If she had joked, maybe, let him in on her breakfast orientated plight, it wouldn't have bothered him, but this felt sort of stiff and formal.

Riku winced inwardly. That was about the billionth time he'd overanalyzed someone's reaction to something he said. He wondered if he was paranoid. The Riku-turtle (as Sora called him) had been teased out of his shell, built of silence and death-glares, and he felt like a child. Social interaction levels at zero percent. He didn't know _what_ meant what.

It was like he'd missed the class on it. Or no, not the class, but the window. That time when everybody was going around learning what was appropriate to say to different levels of stranger, how you knew when you were friends, which relatives to hug and which to shake hands with, who to offer your muffin bottom to.

He almost giggled. _Maybe it's like music_, he thought, _nobody knows what's going on, but everybody pretends to_.

He wanted to think that that was it, that everyone else was just good at hiding it, but he knew quite well that he was fooling himself. He was socially challenged. He'd missed the window, but he had Sora, who had a hand on his knee under the table.

Fuck perfect trees.

A very real, slightly sweaty, dried-out-in-the-winter-air hand with weight and freckles and humanity. Not a (creamy) smooth, tanned dream hand. Riku kept reminding himself of this. No sexual fantasies for seventeen-year-old boys. _No_. Bad Riku!

Which sent him into a fit of mild mental giggles.

"Hmph," he said, pulling himself firmly back into reality. "I guess you're just too good for my muffin."

She shook her head and sighed. "I am, you know. I grew up in a castle; I'm used to only the best of muffins. Our pastry chef made them for us daily. I simply – "sniff" – simply can't tolerate these…these…_commoner_ muffins!"

There was a communal burst of laughs into which Sora interjected, "But you can tolerate commoner Cheerios?"

"Oh," she said, looking affronted and staring at her box from which she was picking individual Cheerios out. "Well, you have to pick your battles."

Riku cocked an eyebrow. "Muffins are your battle?"

"Have you _seen_ the thing you're eating? Those are not blueberries. Those are shriveled angry little beads of evil, stewing in blueberry-flavored evil, floating in half-cooked muffin batter." She jabbed at the bottom half of Riku's muffin with a red fingernail, then wiped the crumbs off on her jeans. There was a little pinky-tip-sized dent in the muffin now.

"Oh, uh, hang on – " Sora said before anyone could reply to Kairi. "My cell phone's – um…" he waved his hand back and forth like tiny vibrations. "Doing this."

"Buzzing?"

"Sure." He pulled his phone out and frowned at the screen before flipping it open. "Roxas? I thought we were gonna find you guys at noon."

He listened to his little brother for a very long time.

Riku wondered if it was appropriate to say anything right now. Not to Sora, of course, but to Kairi, maybe. Sora absently started to massage Riku's knee with his thumb, _swipe…swipe…swipeswipe…_ like windshield wipers. He started going faster and faster.

Kairi and Riku looked at each other. Kairi mouthed, '_Do you know…?_' and pointed to Sora, who was biting his lower lip and squeezing Riku's knee. Riku shook his head. '_No clue_.'

"_D'accord_," Sora started talking again in French. He spoke pretty quickly – or at least, at a fast enough pace that Riku had trouble keeping up. He heard something about waiting, or – coming? One of those, and some verbs he was sure he'd never learned. Maybe some light swearing, but that was just a guess. And sleeping. '_Couche-toi._'

"He says he's getting kinda…" Sora trailed off and glanced at Kairi, who was frowning at them both with raised eyebrows. "Um, Kairi?"

"…yeah?"

"We're just skiing today, right? So Riku and I can stay here if we want?"

_Riku and I_. Not we, not us, so that Kairi might be included. _Riku and I._

Riku wondered if that was why people had relationships. Exclusivity. He questioned (frequently) whether or not the whole Sora thing happened because he was the first to really befriend teenage Riku. He wondered: if Kairi had been the one to talk to him, invite him over to her house, cry on his shoulder, would he be dating a girl now? Happily straight and just as outgoing?

He remembered that weird dream he'd had, with book-surfing Sora and almost-touching. He remembered wondering at the time if he'd had a sort of sexual dream and, if so, if it was because his mind had just been so _happy_ not to reject another human being.

Riku wondered if maybe he just had really low standards past the wall of Angry.

(What a broken, lonely little boy, confused and achy, with questions everyone knew the answer to that he was too afraid to ask.)

He was thinking this while Sora and Kairi had a conversation around him.

"Yeah, I think so. There's a group of kids that's just staying here with one of the teachers. Like…four or five kids, probably. Why?"

It was a box. That was it. Riku-turtle had not come out of his shell; there _was_ no Riku-turtle. There was Riku and his box. His tiny little globe, like a biosphere. Running on his own bitterness, and Sora had found the door and climbed in and snuggled up to Riku and kissed him on the forehead. But Sora had come in, not let Riku out.

"Um, I think I kind of have to go look for somebody. My brother's friend. D'you think we'll be able to leave?"

_That_ must have been it.

"Can I help?"

Right?

"I don't think so. You don't know what he looks like and he doesn't know what you look like. But Riku 'n I have talked to him."

"Oh…" she twirled a finger through her Cheerios. "Okay."

Outside, the wind tickled the bare branches, which rattled against each other and shook off residual snow. Fat, wobbly tourists, with rolls of lard like tires around their ill-concealed bellies, tottered by with children encased in synthetic winter coats.

Inside was Riku being kissed on the forehead by (his) Sora. Wishing he had his mp3 player, or a book.

* * *

"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."  
- **Chuck Palahniuk**, _Invisible Monsters_

_

* * *

_

Axel had called Roxas at seven fifteen on the dot, because he was absolutely anal about time, and informed him that no, he wasn't dead and had not abandoned his friend, and yes, he was very, very lost somewhere in Annecy and couldn't actually find a street sign for the street he was on. But there was a little pastry shop and a McDonald's and a pharmacy.

Yes, Roxas, I'm fine.

No, Roxas, I wasn't mugged.

Yes, Roxas, I won't be this stupid again.

No, Roxas, I'm not too cold.

Yes, Roxas, I'll stay where I am.

Shut up, Roxas, go call your brother.

And Roxas called Sora, who took Riku. He explained to the teacher – with some difficulty and a halting, awkward tone, almost never making eye contact because I Don't Want Other People to Feel Uncomfortable Because of Me – the situation and by some disgusting and hideous miracle was set free with the promise of at least calling once an hour.

Riku and Sora had to stay with each other, but Roxas, having lost his chaperone, was free to head in a different direction.

All this to say: Riku and Sora were walking through the snowy French city of Annecy on Christmas Eve, past pastry shops and McDonald's and pharmacies (but never in that order), looking for Axel.

Everything was different, with snow. It was fresh, of course, had yet to get stepped on in most places, but the movies didn't lie. Not really a blanket, the way the books said it was, but it was like tiny landscapes. You could see the shapes of things underneath it, the round bulge of a rock or the square lump of a trapped wagon.

They were walking down a mildly busy street, and a pretty, touristy one at that – shops offering t-shirts and pins, informational books, food. Paulette's famous this-and-that.

The curbs were covered in snow, even if the sidewalks were plowed. It was dirty and slightly melted on the corners, and there were a few places trampled by footprints where people had slammed car doors shut and clambered over the bank to get somewhere.

It wasn't sunny, exactly, but the sky wasn't very promising of rain or shine. Just grey. Sighing. Resigned. Hunks and sheets of snow on the striped overhangs of restaurants and shops fell to the ground in front of them, leaving a powdery white stain like a frozen blood splatter.

Sora had thin, wooly gloves on and Riku didn't. So he pulled his jacket sleeves down over his palms to try and compensate.

The air was cold and clean. It was colder and cleaner than he'd ever felt, which wasn't surprising; it was the way his skin felt when he opened the freezer on a humid day. Everything seemed sharply defined and settled. With humidity, lines were blurred; he felt smudged. The irony of this wasn't lost on him. _All the better to keep myself locked up with, my love!_

Lines were crisp and it was harder to reach through them, so he was glad when Sora was the one to reach out and hold Riku's right hand with his wooly, glovey left. Riku put his other hand in his pocket.

"You okay?"

Riku blinked and looked at his boyfriend, avoiding eye contact with one of the patrons of a bistro behind Sora. "Yeah. Why?"

Sora shrugged, and they kept walking. "You just seemed sort of…more…quiet than usual, I guess. Different sort of quiet."

"Well, we're supposed to be looking for Axel."

"Yeah…" Sora sighed. "Maybe we should ask people?"

There was a twinge in Riku. Irrational as it was (and, honestly, what wasn't?), he didn't really want to. Not as a matter of pride, or anything. But the act of going up to a stranger, who might assume things about them with varying degrees of truth that Riku didn't want known, asking them about this street or if they'd seen a distinctive redhead, taking the chance that you'd encounter a real jerk or a gossipy old woman or an overeager man or just…it…even if it proved helpful. He didn't want to. They'd find him eventually, if they just kept looking.

"Let's look for that road first," he said. "We can ask later if we still can't find him."

Riku ran his chapped thumb over Sora's hand, this time. Sora smiled at him. "Sounds like a plan," he said, turning his eyes back to the sidewalk. Sora's coat was waterproof and dumpy. It was a skiing jacket. There was even a tag on it, a pass attached to the zipper for some ski resort (it was in French). It was from a few years ago. Something in Riku felt a twinge when he thought about Sora wearing a jacket from before his parents died. Like there should be a line there; this was _before_, and here is _after_. Simple. Your life is now different; please check all remnants of your pre-orphaned state at the emotional baggage counter.

There was a happy equilibrium reached between them, a mutual monogamy and unsaid amenity. Sora held Riku's hand and they walked.

Riku's jeans were too big. Not _too_ big, exactly, but they were baggy and dragged on the ground. On Destiny Island that wasn't really a problem, since all they ever got was dusty. If he went outside at all that day, he mused.

Here there were not-frozen-enough puddles, which themselves created problems. He glanced back casually and noted, with a surprised indifference, that the water had seeped all the way up the calves of his jeans, though it was widest at the bottom. The front of his pants was completely dry. He started to feel the chill through the denim, though; it was unpleasant. Every step he took meant more dirty water was flicked onto the backs of his legs.

He thought about the actual flesh of his legs, distractedly agreeing to go down the road Sora was pointing to. It felt cold and damp. Like his limbs were marinated in ice water. Seeped into his skin and left it clammy and indignant. Pinpricks of icicles, and the fabric of his jeans scratched his legs uncomfortably. It was an entirely new and unwelcome sensation for Riku Tepes of Destiny Island.

So focused was he on his cold, wet cuffs that he was intensely surprised to look up and see a small Lutheran church on the right. It wasn't like churches were unheard of, or anything, it was just that Destiny Island had never been attacked by particularly zealous colonists. There were churches, sure, and temples, probably a synagogue and a mosque or a shrine, somewhere, but there weren't really a _lot_ of them. And they certainly weren't very old.

It was pretty. White stucco with a roof and a steeple edged in dark, dark grey, and a bell in the very top of the tower gone green. It couldn't have been more than a room and an office, if you didn't count the tower. There was just enough room on either side for two abstract blue stained-glass windows. White and grey and blue, on a lawn that was striped light and dark green depending on how it was mowed, with a steeple casually tickling a grey sky – it was a beautiful church, God aside. There was a golden cross on the top, though, as much a reminder of the building's purpose as a striped overhang covered in snow for a restaurant.

There was a nice wooden sign with a plastic board and interchangeable letters: _SUNDAY MORNING SERVICE 9 AM_ followed by a short quotation from the New Testament.

Riku, to his own surprise, didn't even toy with the idea of pulling his hand away from Sora's. It felt too nice, warm and wooly and glovey, hiding his hand in Sora's. He considered that perhaps he should feel guilty, or dirty, or rotten. Flaunting a gay relationship. But some part of him – perhaps childish and naïve, protected by his little shell, delicate but un-cracked from lack of exposure – could not see how anything they were doing was wrong. But he didn't feel lusty and sinful. He and Sora, they were friendship with kisses and accidental dreams. Curled up together while one tried to stop crying and the other tried to start.

He wasn't even trying to kid himself. He felt clean. Fitted to the situation. He couldn't imagine a priest coming out and lecturing them about what they were doing wrong, because it didn't even feel as if he _should_ feel any other way than he did. He felt happy in a subdued, peaceful way, like swinging on a swing set for a whole hour all by yourself as a little kid. Singing songs nobody could hear.

It felt _right_.

He was pretty sure that by any standard, he and Sora were…healthy. In the way that they interacted, at least. The way that a nervous hand-squeeze would be replied with a reassuring one.

He stopped in front of the white-grey-blue church with Sora, and stared at it with an absent smile on his face, even if the wetness of his pant legs was scratching his ankles. Sora leaned his shoulder against Riku's and tilted his head to the opposite side. "Pretty," he said at length, and Riku nodded.

White-grey-blue and it emanated a non-judgmental peace. Riku felt welcomed. He felt clean and happy and washed.

He leaned over and kissed Sora on the lips, not hard, but enough so that there was a wet sound when they parted.

"What was that for?" Sora asked him, his eyes the same color as the stained-glass windows. They were not the color the sky oughtta be. They were just the kind of color that went where it went. He was smiling.

Riku shrugged and grinned sheepishly and they kept walking.

A few minutes later Sora shook his head and stared at his hair. "I should've taken a shower before we left," he said, "I feel all greasy and deflated."

Riku grunted.

"…Hey…Riku?"

"Yeah, Sora?" Sora glanced back in the direction of the church, which was just out of sight.

"Do you think that if people knew what happened after they died that there would be fewer suicides?"

Riku took this calmly, as he had learned to do. He thought over the words, and where they might have come from in Sora's mind. He considered it with a sort of detached doubtfulness.

"I…don't think they're doing it out of curiosity," he said skeptically.

Sora shook his head and they slowed their walk down a bit. "Yeah, I know, but I mean…I mean, people commit suicide because they just don't want to live any more, right? And if you knew…if you knew what was waiting for you, it takes away that…the like…the wild card, sort of. I mean, I guess. You can't just have it be whatever you want. Heaven or purgatory or nothingness. You'd have to know _just_ what was waiting for you as soon as you t-took the plunge, right?"

"…Sora?"

"What?"

Riku paused and then squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again. "Never mind."

"Nuh-_uh_," Sora nudged him in the side with their hands. "Tell me! I wanna know, anyways."

Riku sighed. "Wouldn't it…depend on what was there? I mean, maybe there are fewer suicides because people are afraid, depending on what they believe. Suicide's a really bad thing in a lot of religions. Like in Hinduism and Buddhism and the reincarnation and stuff, it's kind of like cheating, because that's how you get to the next life. And for Christianity it just means Hell, right?"

"Yeah, suicide is a really bad thing for religions." Sora looked thoughtful and glanced back in the direction of the church again. "But if we knew it didn't matter what you did in this life, or if you all went to the same place and were treated the same, or if there was just – _nothing_ – would people do it more or less?"

Riku shrugged. "I think…" And he had to stop here, because he wasn't entirely sure _what_ he thought. There was a long quiet, spanning a few minutes, and they kept walking. The wind bit Riku's ears.

"…I…guess if you've gotten to the point where you really are attempting suicide, you've probably thought it through so thoroughly that there's no _way_ anything waiting for you could be worse than what you're leaving behind. I mean, unless you're totally sure, you're probably not banking on nothingness or paradise or purgatory. So it…might not even affect it at all. Maybe about the same number of people would…stop from…doing it…as the ones that would…go through with it, but…aren't right now." He lost steam at the end, struggling desperately to remember what he was trying to say and how to put it into words properly. Trying to go back and understand what it was he had just said.

Sora squeezed his hand and moved in closer, so the lengths of their arms were touching. He shivered, and Riku wondered if it was really just from the cold. Riku's nose felt disconnected from his body, and he could feel a cold forming in it, and found himself wishing he'd worn thicker socks with his sneakers. He let Sora think, because he'd learned it was easier to do that than to ask if his friend was okay.

He wondered (at the veins of thought that rivered Sora's mind) at the oddness of their conversation, and wondered why it was always Sora bringing these things up and Riku spouting extemporaneous crap about it so that Sora could provide a counter-argument.

"Their room had these yellow walls," he said very quietly. "They weren't really bright or really pale, but I remember looking at them when I was a little kid and I'd had a nightmare, so I was sleeping in their bed."

Riku didn't even stop to wonder who he was talking about. Just squeezed his fingers.

The funny thing was that Sora didn't sound even close to being on the verge of tears. He just sounded…quiet.

"I wonder what they were thinking," he almost-whispered, "Right before they died. I wonder if they died scared. Or alone."

* * *

"Being friendless taught me how to be a friend. Funny how that works."  
- **Colleen Wainwright**

* * *

Twelve-thirty in the afternoon.

_Twelve-thirty_.

Eight and a half hours after Axel had initially left.

_Half past fucking noon._

Axel had managed, in about an hour, to get eight and a half hours' worth of lost. Which was kind of ridiculous. In the time that had passed he'd bought himself a crappy fruit salad from McDonald's. He would have gotten something cooked, or at least under the semblance of having been hot at one point, but that would have required him to order instead of just showing the cashier the container and producing the right amount of money.

Then, his manly pride refusing to let him revisit the McDonald's, he'd bought a plastic-wrapped bagel sandwich from the pastry shop next to it for lunch.

Axel was a cold, tired, miserable little boy when Riku and Sora turned the corner.

"Hey!" he waved and took few graceful, bounding steps over (he did, unwittingly, copy what he saw. And at the circus he saw ribbon dancers. Go figure.), entirely unashamed, despite the fact that Riku was embarrassed looking at him.

Riku considered this. He glared at Axel offhandedly and wondered. What if _he_ was the one who'd gotten lost in…Germany, or something? Where he had no hope of communicating with the people there? He sincerely didn't know if he'd be willing to call someone and tell him he was lost with no justification. He supposed he would, eventually, if nobody called him first. But while waiting he would try his best to hide the fact. Lean casually against a telephone pole or sit on the curb and fiddle with his cell phone. Just so that people wouldn't look at him and see a useless, lost tourist.

He figured that didn't make any sense. If he saw someone standing on the sidewalk looking around, that could mean anything. You didn't immediately assume that they were lost and waiting to be found. You might assume they were – were _waiting _for somebody, or for a taxi, or people-watching or a million other things before you went to the undignified abnormalities.

But he would probably feel embarrassed.

_Now_, anyways.

Goddamn it, Sora, and with that some tiny amount of nostalgic irritation flamed. It was cheesy, was what. Maybe it was the kid's fault. Maybe optimism was partially contagious. "Strangers are people too," sort of thing. Anger had turned into paranoia, because if Riku could think horrible things about people, they could think that about him.

Or maybe they didn't. Maybe Riku was just a horrible, nasty, awful person, who (used to?) thought the worst of everybody, including himself.

But now the lines were getting smudged like they were being wiped with a crappy eraser. The plastic, dry kind that didn't even give off eraser-bits because it was impossible to break. Oh, he'd _hated_ those.

Sora and Axel were talking and Riku was starting to think he was still pretty badly self-involved. In fact, he would probably regress back to his former state if Sora ever left. Riku flinched inwardly and Didn't Think about their college discussion.

(Listen, we'll both just apply to places that we want to go, but we shouldn't go somewhere just because the other is going there. But if there's overlap, that's great. Okay? We'll deal with it when it happens.)

"So our dorms are about…" Sora looked at Riku. "How far away? If we head back down the main street it might only be a thirty-minute walk. We could always ask Roxas to meet us there. I dunno where your motel is, exactly."

Riku probably would have numbly agreed.

"Well," Axel said hesitantly, "How about we call him and ask where he is right now? If he's close-ish, he might as well just come here and then we can head back. We're leaving early tomorrow morning, anyways."

"Oh!" Sora smiled. "Yeah, that seems fine. Okay, d'you want to call him or should I?"

Axel had the decency to look sheepish. He hunched in on himself and smiled nervously, eyes darting to Riku. "Well, probably you, since I still don't know where we are."

"Right," Sora grinned and took his phone out of his pocket. When Roxas picked up, he spoke French at first and ended with English. "_Ouais, nous le –__ ouais. Non, sur le –__ non, la rue est –__ oui, oui, entre les deux. Donc – ah, je le sais. Mm-hm. _Right now? I think it's just off Christophe Street. _O__ù es-tu?_ Okay, sounds good. See you soon." He was smiling a different smile when he flipped the phone shut. "His English is getting pretty good," he remarked, still staring at it.

"Yeah," Axel said, "He said his English-language-learning thing is pretty useless, but since he can use it during the school day and I help him over the phone, he's definitely been improving." He chuckled, which was the only way to describe it. Close-mouthed and slightly smug. "He really likes to learn slang words, since nobody teaches you that in the official language course."

"Ah, yeah," Sora said, and nodded. Riku thought of a couple of things he could say, but he hadn't said anything yet, so it seemed easier to just keep silent. Let it seem completely intentional (instead of just _mostly_ intentional). Things about how in his French class they didn't really talk about contractions or regional accents, and how they probably weren't allowed to teach them swears and things.

Awkward silence settled over the group. Crept up like a tide. Sora looked down at the sidewalk, the crystals of salt that kept more ice from forming. (Riku, however, was entirely confused by the salt.)

Riku wasn't about to start any conversations.

"So, I can see why you got lost," Sora said eventually. "For some reason, the street sign that led to this street had been knocked over. I saw part of it sticking up, but the rest of it was covered in snow."

"Oh, is that why?" Axel asked conversationally. "I was kind of feeling stupid, but I checked either end of the street a few times and I couldn't see anything. I considered looking for the nearest street _with_ a sign on it, but for all I knew they're all like this, so I decided not to risk it." Sora nodded along with the comment.

There was another pause.

"Yeah, it's a pretty bad idea to have an unlabeled street," Riku said. "I mean, if you hadn't had your phone or if you didn't have anyone you could call to help you out you might have gotten completely stuck." He felt stupid as soon as he'd said it.

He felt some small triumph when they both nodded. "It must've been down for a while," Sora said, "There were a couple of layers of snow on it."

"Yeah?" Axel asked. "Go figure."

There were more lapses of silence and more two-minute conversations, several times over, for the next fifteen minutes. It reminded Riku of visiting relatives. Talk-talk-talk quiet. Talk-talk-talk quiet-talk-quiet, and no topics had enough steam to propel themselves. Axel crossed his arms across his chest and Riku and Sora held hands, noiselessly, under their sleeves.

Riku heard Roxas walking towards them, completely unsure whether he ought to ignore him until the kid came around the other side or if they should turn around to face him or – something else, but the crunches of snow grew too close, so Riku pretended he didn't realize who was there until Roxas stomped around to stand near Axel.

Axel grinned. "Hey there, Smiles."

Roxas scowled at him.

Roxas looked like a jewelry commercial. He wasn't _wearing_ any--at least, not that Riku could see, but with a different expression he could easily be offering some pretty girl (Riku's mind supplied a Kairi-clone) a necklace or a pair of earrings for Christmas. What with the timeless beige pea coat, the nice face (like Sora, but sharper and less friendly, the difference between a corn snake and a milk snake), the blond hair and the blue eyes, Roxas carried a sort of unrealistic charm. Riku hated it. Hated the blond hair and the pale face and the blue eyes.

It seemed insincere, somehow. It would not fit in with the Lutheran church and the grey sky. There were little silver beads of melted snow on Roxas's hair.

Axel frowned. "What, you don't like it? It's a decent nickname! How about Chuckles?"

Roxas rolled his eyes and fwapped Axel in the chest. "You'd bettair not get lost again. Zis is the second time in six monts!"

Axel scratched his head and patted Roxas's. "I'm a free spirit, Chuckles. Like an outdoor cat."

"Like a _hobo_," Roxas muttered, shaking his head. He put an extra emphasis on the H. Axel laughed, which sounded like _pah!_, and slung an arm around his friend's shoulders. Riku watched impassively.

Axel had to lean down a bit to be able to lean on Roxas, and he grinned at Sora (and Riku). "So, I think I'm gonna let my not-lost buddy here lead me back to the motel, where there are hot showers and cable and nice fluffy pillows, yeah?"

Riku, not feeling it was his place to answer, stayed silent. And Sora, knowing Riku would not be feeling it was his place to answer, spoke. "Sounds good. You guys are leaving tomorrow, right? So this is probably the last…last time we're gonna see you."

Axel blinked. "Ah…yeah. I mean, I'm sure if you just give me directions I can make it back on my own, actually. So Rox, you can stay here and hang out with your brother, right?"

Roxas blinked and looked at Sora, glanced at Riku, looked at Sora again. "W-well," he said. "Ah…I could take you back, zhen come back 'ere or to ze dorms? Axel is terrible wiz directions."

Axel grinned and shook his head. "Sad thing is, the kid's right."

Sora nodded, and Riku felt a pang of sympathy for Roxas. He figured Axel was Roxas's Sora, in all ways but one, and knew he'd resent being in that situation. But he couldn't very well _say_ that.

"Yeah, okay," Sora said. "Sorry about this."

"Nah, nah, 's my fault!" Axel insisted.

Roxas looked at Riku and seemed surprised to find Riku looking back. Their eyes met. There were formal introductions and Riku secretly rejoiced in the fact that Roxas did not offer him an awkward placating smile. Simply stared, and his face seemed very careful. His lips were not a line, nor a smile, nor a frown, but set against one another comfortably. His eyes were open, but not squinting; his hands were neutrally in his pockets.

It was difficult to remember the two-year age gap.

It was not difficult to remember anything else.

_You are the one keeping a piece of Sora in France._

_You are the one taking my brother away from me._

_You are the one with the unbreakable bond._

_You are the one he chooses to be with._

_You have been through things I can't imagine._

_You are the lucky one._

"See you later," Riku said to both of them, looking at Roxas. Roxas smiled shakily.

* * *

After Roxas and Axel had gone around the corner:

"Come on," Riku said, feeling loose and happy and wanted with Sora leaning against him. He placed a careful arm around his boyfriend's shoulders. "We should go back. World's still turning and the air is arctic."

Sora frowned at him but didn't shrug Riku's arm off his shoulders. "What?"

Riku shook his head and, giving into a whim, kissed Sora on his human forehead. "Never mind. It's not important."

* * *

"Hey, Mom?" Riku shouldered the strap of the suitcase awkwardly. The woven plastic scratched his skin. "Yeah, we landed half an hour ago. Mmhm. No, there's a bus." He glanced at Sora, who was pretending to fall asleep on Kairi's shoulder and fake-snoring. His boyfriend cracked an eyelid and saw Riku staring. He stuck his tongue out, grinned and butted Kairi's shoulder a little.

"God, Sora, it's like being snuggle-molested by a hedgehog," Kairi muttered, wiggling away.

"Pfft," Sora said. He came around the plastic table to sit next to Riku. "Fine. I'll just lean on _Riku_. At least _he_ loves me." Sora sighed grandly and rested his arm around Riku's waist.

Riku made a motion like slitting his throat with his finger, staring at Sora, and went back to the phone.

"I dunno, Mom, but it should show up soon. It'll probably drop us off at the high school. Yeah. No, no, it's okay. I'll walk home. It's not _that_ far! It's like a forty-minute walk at the _most_, and my bag's not really heavy at all. Yes, I'm sure. Really. Yeah, I will." Riku groaned when he hung up and angrily stuffed his phone back into a side pocket on his suitcase. As if it was the phone's fault, somehow.

He just didn't feel like getting picked up. Like it would have been a blow to his independence, to spend all of ten days parent-free, feeling quite accomplished in terms of Meeting the Brother and finding Axel (and having a sex dream, but that didn't count). And to end it by being taken home by your mother in her minivan, being asked 'how it went,' seemed pretty damn awful.

The airport here – and Riku wasn't sure how he'd missed it the first time he was here – smelled thickly of ocean. Sandy. It invoked images of cheesy beach towels and little kids squealing about cold water. Then again, the airport in France had smelled like bread, and sickly sweet, like dead flowers.

"Hey," Sora said. "Do you guys wanna hang out today?"

Riku almost groaned. Was ten days not enough for the guy? He had literally not had a moment to himself, outside the bathroom, since the trip began. Not even when he _slept_. Sora was fucking clingy when he was asleep. Riku didn't really mind that much, aside from the fact that the nightmares seemed so much more real when Riku saw them up close. Sora shook and kicked; sometimes he cried.

Riku was too tired for this. He needed to go home and just…kick Sora out of the biosphere for a few hours. He needed to close the door of his bedroom, open a window and stare out. He needed to take a shower and play videogames and not have to interact with anybody. (Leopards can't change their spots.)

"I don't think I can," he said. "I have to go home and unpack and stuff. My mom will probably want me in the house since I was away for so long, plus two of my brothers came home from college for Christmas and I probably have to see them." All legitimate, real excuses. None of them sincere.

"Oh…" Sora said, blankly. Kairi nodded.

"Yeah," she said, "I have to unpack. But I should be free by later tonight, like after dinnertime. So I'll call you at like seven or eight?"

Sora nodded. "Yeah, sure, sounds cool! Riku?"

Riku licked his dry lips. "I…" he thought on his feet, "I don't know yet. I still have to touch base with my family."

"Okay. So I'll call you later?"

He nodded.

It was always Sora who called. Riku never called, not anyone. He didn't know quite why; maybe he was too shy, or scared that they'd pick up and he wouldn't have anything to say. Maybe he was scared they _wouldn't_ pick up.

* * *

His room was exactly the same, which wasn't surprising. It was composed of varying intensities of blue. The floor was a light-blue rug (stained with childhood), and the bedspread had been changed recently to dark blue sheets. The walls were grey, but it was grey with a bluish tint, and had no posters. Not even a picture taped above his bed.

There was a stuffed fish hanging on the wall; it was his birthday present when he turned seven. Loz took him fishing and Dad had his biggest catch stuffed. Riku thought it was creepy in a sad sort of way, so he left it up there. Its eyes were glass marbles, and it was covered in a sort of plastic glue that had stunk for weeks. Its fins were forever erect, its mouth open in surprise. There was still a small hole in the top of its head where it'd been pierced with the hook. It was only about a foot long. Loz had said it probably hadn't even reached sexual maturity; it was too little for the species.

It wasn't that Riku really felt guilty about it, but he didn't want the thing put in a box somewhere far away, gathering dust on his conscience.

He took a really deep breath. Mom was still at work for at least another hour. His brothers were probably off dicking around at the baseball field or something.

He sat down on his bed, which made the non-sound-blue-sound of a tired bed, and turned on his computer out of habit. The log-on sound sparked familiarity in his consciousness.

Riku by himself, separate from everything. He shut the door, heard the click of the latch, and sighed. For now, Riku was alone in his tiny world. Trapped like a happy mouse in his den.

He had no obligations, but the "I'll call you later" weighed heavily on him. He didn't want any plans for the immediate future; he wanted the world to fuck off.

It occurred to him that he had nothing to do. He was so indescribably, ridiculously, unjustifiably happy about this, he curled his toes and grinned.

He felt peaceful. His life was a one-instrument song. A single finger on the whole piano. For one hour, he returned to junior year; Riku did not need to check in with anyone, maintain relationships, worry about what others thought of him, or what he ought to say to anyone. He did not have to think about white churches with grey roofs and Sora-colored stained glass windows.

He was separate, closed off with sharp lines despite the humidity. He felt sharply defined. It was not a bad thing, nor was it a permanent one. He closed his eyes, lay down on the bed, and opened them again. He stared at the white ceiling.

After a time, he got a pencil from the desk in the corner. He stood on the bed, which wasn't nearly bouncy enough to cause him trouble, and wrote on the ceiling above it:

_Très équivoque._

He bit his lip and smiled.

* * *

It took half an hour of Mom and Kadaj being in the same house for the fighting to start. It was never serious things, and nothing lasted more than a day, but it was still awful. It was always so _stupid_! They argued about laundry or his still-undeclared major, why he never had a girlfriend more than three months, why she felt the need to control everything, how he played his music too loud. He'd gotten _better_. But Riku suspected that being in the same house together made Kadaj feel like he was still in high school.

The problem was that they were both just such stubborn people. He thought that in all likelihood, they didn't care half the time what they were arguing about. Just that the other person didn't get the upper hand.

He locked his door and sat on his bed with the big headphones. Fancy ones that covered the entirety of you ears, instead of sticking in them. They'd been very expensive, so Riku only used them for his computer at home. They blocked out a lot of the noise. Just not _all_ of it.

He could hear the shouts. He couldn't hear what was being said, but he heard the difference between the tenor of his brother and the awkward soprano his mom adopted when she was angry.

He drew his knees up and turned the music on the computer up. He didn't even care what it _was_, so long as it was loud. He knew he didn't live in a broken home, or anything; he wasn't complaining, but it was distressing. When you were nine years old and your fourteen-year-old brother had tri-weekly fights with your mother that you didn't really understand, it was sad and scary.

Mom and Kadaj had taught Riku to stay quiet when you had an objection. Unless he wanted to be the one shouting, he didn't say anything when his mother yelled at him for leaving out dishes that he hadn't. He just listened and made eye contact, because that way he didn't have to argue.

He wasn't _afraid_ of arguing. He just didn't want to be part of that horrible shouting match. They'd been so awful when he was a kid. So awful. Hearing his parents angry and his brother angrier had made him flinch, because families weren't supposed to do that. He knew better now, of course. He knew it was just in the nature of teenagers to fight back, even if he folded. He knew it was literally nothing. Especially when it was compared to things that some people dealt with.

In between the shouting, he slid the headphones off his ears and crept downstairs. He opened the door to the study; it scraped against the thick carpet.

"Dad?"

His father turned in his chair to look back at Riku. He slid his glasses down his nose. He raised his eyebrows.

"I'm gonna…" another shout. Riku dropped to a whisper. "I'm just gonna go to Sora's, okay? I'll bring my phone."

"Will you be back for dinner?"

Riku glanced at his watch, which read ten to seven. "Doubt it," he said.

Dad nodded. "Will you sleep over there?"

Riku almost flinched. He'd never asked…either of his parents, really, how they'd feel about having a gay son. He wondered: if they knew who Sora really was for Riku, would they still let him sleep over at Sora's house? Did the same rules for a teenager apply if you were gay?

He shrugged. "I don't know yet."

He suspected – perhaps unfoundedly – that they wouldn't mind so terribly much. They had three other straight sons; what did it matter if the youngest wasn't? They weren't religious. They were liberal.

Didn't mean he wanted to _tell_ them.

"All right," his dad said, and that was all there was to the matter.

* * *

"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all."  
- **Samuel Butler**

**

* * *

**

Riku wondered, as he walked into the house, when it was exactly that he'd just stopped bothering to knock. He just used the key hidden in a fake rock and walked in most of the time; Belle didn't see him because she was working or busy, and when she did, she seemed delighted.

Riku _knew_ she knew about him and Sora. Sora had told her. He wondered why she still gave them so much freedom. So much trust unearned.

He dismissed the thought, ignored the cat and knocked on the door to Sora's room.

"Yeah? Belle, I'm not hungry."

"It's me."

A thoughtful pause. "Riku? Come in."

Riku did. Sora was sitting, cross-legged, on his bed, surrounded by books, of all things. Seemed an odd thing to heap around yourself. Like stuffed animals for grown-ups, or something, Sora had them in messy piles, but not stacks. He grinned. "Finally getting around to unpacking the books," he said sheepishly. "That part of the house was actually mostly intact for some reason. My room, I mean."

Riku blinked. There were a good number of thin, hard-backed, large books – picture books. Kid ones. Sora was sorting them.

_I wonder if they died scared. Or alone._

He supposed it was good sign, that Sora could be touching all of these things and not getting upset. Seemed an odd thing to do, though, unpacking your books with only tonight and one more day left of Christmas vacation. Maybe, he figured, Sora had finally mustered up the courage and acted before he talked himself out of it.

"Oh," Riku said, "Cool."

Sora smiled at him and then didn't.

"Can I help?" Riku asked. "I mean, if you're busy I can just…"

"No, no! I – no, it's fine, don't leave. I could definitely use the help," Sora laughed. "I'm putting little kid picture books over there – " he gestured to the floor on one side of the bed, "And then chapter books, like novels, over there," another side of the bed, "And non-fiction here." He pointed to the pillows at the head of the bed, laden with a few volumes of an encyclopedia, dictionaries in a couple of different languages, educational books about Vikings and dinosaurs and how-to manuals. "And then I'll sort from there."

"Okay," Riku said, coming over to the end of the bed with the unsorted books. The sun streaming through the window, tinted orange, lighting on all the dust floating through the air like gold particulates, seemed out of place. Like the sun shouldn't shine when you were sorting books owned by Sora With Parents.

Riku sat down on the footboard, balanced awkwardly, and every time he found a non-fiction book he had to lean over Sora to toss it into the pile.

Sora seemed content to be quiet, for the most part. Occasionally he would pick up a book and then laugh and tell Riku something about it. Mostly picture books.

"Oh, hey, check this one out," Sora laughed and showed Riku a book of short stories. "It's a bunch of things about trickster gods," he said. "You know, Anansi and Coyote and Loki and a bunch of other ones I can't remember. Man, my mom _loved_ these. She really like this one about some god who had a hat that was two different colors down the middle," Sora drew a line from the front of his head to the back to show Riku the way the line went and told him the story.

"She really liked it," Sora said, "Because half the time the gods would end up being tricked themselves. She said it was how she meant to teach us not to lie," a laugh, lighthearted and fluttery and weighed down with lead, "Because we would…um…oh, we would just get tangled up in them or something." His laugh was like the very last scrapings of the laugh barrel, pushed out forcefully.

There, hidden in the backs of his eyes, were the tears Riku had been looking for. Sora choked them back and swallowed.

"What were they like?" (To Sora, Riku's voice was and always would be soothing. It was low, and not terribly smooth or rough, but direct without being ambitious. It snuck into your ear and coiled there.) "Your parents."

There were enough books sorted now that Sora could put his hands on the bed between them, staring at his fingers.

"You don't have to – "

"No, no, it's fine," Sora said, smiling down at the bed. "I'm just thinking."

"Oh," Riku said, "Yeah, okay. I guess it's a tough question."

"Yeah," his friend laughed. "Um…well. Dad taught fourth graders at an elementary school, and my mom, she was a translator. Only, for a while she worked on a tree farm – you know, raising baby trees? But when I was seven she started translating and stuff. Her family was from America." Riku was nodding and kept his eyes on Sora. So when Sora raised his gaze, the first thing he saw was a patient stare. _His_ stare. "And," Sora cleared his throat and spoke a little better. "So, my dad was this really energetic guy. He was really into the whole family thing. Like, dinners together and game night and Sunday-at-the-park and shit. Only, sometimes if I had a ton of homework, he'd let me eat dinner in my room while working – uh," Sora blinked, and his eyes had gotten red. He swallowed a couple of times and smiled a watery smile. "S-sorry."

Riku scooted down from the footboard, to the empty space now cleared of unsorted books, and put his hand on Sora's. The one with the skin graft, not that he meant to.

"Sorry," Sora said again, shakily, and he put his forehead against the side of Riku's neck. He was shaking, just a little tiny bit.

"It's fine," Riku said. "You don't have to…"

Sora shook his head against Riku's neck. His coarse hair was scratchy. It felt like a bigger version of Loz's unshaved face in the morning. Riku had called him porcupine-man when he was little and Loz was…how old had he been? Old enough to shave.

"No," his friend said, "No, I kinda…want to, you know?"

"Yeah."

There was a long silence. In the silence Riku put his hand on Sora's back and rubbed up and down, feeling the cloth rolling under his fingers and a warm, solid Sora underneath it. Sora shivered.

"My mom was sorta…I mean, I dunno. It was weird, because she worked from home, so a lot of the time she would be home, but I couldn't talk to her or ask her things because she was too busy, and it was really annoying. Oh! And she really liked animals. She, she – we had a dog and she was always sort of s-spoiling him and, um, she loved taking him on really long walks and stuff."

"Mmhm…" Riku wasn't sure what to say. Hell, he wasn't even sure why he'd _asked_! He'd just…wanted to know.

Sora made a sniffling sound, and shifted his position so he could comfortably rest his head on Riku's shoulder. "It's still weird," he mumbled. "They still…they still don't seem all the way dead. And…" He made a sound like swallowing grief. _Glunkulp_. He started shaking just a little bit, and probably crying, but silently. "I felt like it should have been raining but it never did."

Sora and Riku lay down next to each other. On their sides, face-to-face. Sora had his eyes closed and his lips pressed together and shaking a little.

"Damn," he whispered eventually, "I've been crying way too much lately. I'm kind of a wimp."

"Don't say that," Riku muttered. "Idiot."

"I don't think I've ever seen _you_ cry."

That was because Sora's eyes were closed right now.

"The hell do I have to cry about?" Riku asked him, putting a hand in the space between them.

Sora scooted in closer and wrapped one arm around Riku in a sort of loose hug. He was warm and solid and Sora, and he said with his achy-breaky-shaky voice: "Hey, Riku Tepes."

"Yeah, Sora?"

"I'm…I'm really glad you aren't dead."

They fell asleep like that. For almost an hour. Red-faced and headachy when they finally woke up.

* * *

Domesticity was strange in its fleeting nature. One minute you were trying to run away from some stupid argument your family was having around you and the next you were comforting your boyfriend about his dead parents for two-hundred-seventy suicides. It turned out that the harder you tried not to think about death, the more you thought about it.

The next morning (not that they'd slept the whole night; Belle woke them up around eight to eat dinner) Riku remembered the school-wide letter sent to sympathetic parents in fourth grade: the father of one of the children at the school had passed away, so everyone should take special care to keep from upsetting the child in question.

Riku almost laughed, now, thinking about it. The death of one person meant a school-wide letter and a great big deal when sometimes a person's whole life burned down. They'd acted like nobody's parents ever died, ever. Like this was some horrible, strange anomaly. How _dare_ reality encroach on the perfection of life on Destiny Island.

Riku hated it. He felt no shame in hating it. He supposed he blamed this place, the entirety of the dry side of the island, for keeping him locked so tight in his world. For keeping him in the mindset of _does not happen_. He had always assumed that unhappy endings happened to other people, really. Not that he really expected an unhappy ending; at least, not in the traditional sense. But perhaps _unsatisfactory_, like the ending of a good movie. They left you feeling as if there was no more to be had: as if these peoples' lives may as well have ended for all they did after their adventure.

He wondered what would happen when he graduated. The applications had been sent out; the colleges were not replying yet. School itself seemed futile. Why bother keeping your grades up when colleges wouldn't look at them?

He wondered if he and Sora would keep in touch, or if they'd promise to and then not. He didn't entertain thoughts of going to the same college. It would have been silly and pointless. But long-distance friendship wasn't so silly, was it?

"You look thoughtful," Sora said conversationally, and Riku almost jumped.

"Hm?"

His boyfriend shook his head and sat up on his elbows. "Penny for your thoughts?"

Riku sighed. "Nothing to think."

"Mm," Sora dropped it, giving Riku an odd look before taking his right arm in his hands and playing his fingers across it. It almost tickled, but not enough to make Riku laugh.

"Hey, Riku?"

"Yeah?"

"What do you think your major is gonna be?"

"…I don't know yet."

"But I mean, like, art or science or business? Are you leaning any way in particular?"

Riku snorted. Maybe he ought to be a psychologist. He could be his own case study. "Not really, yet. I don't think I want to be an artist."

"I wanna design _videogames_!" Sora rolled over onto his back and wound his arms around Riku's neck, grinning like a satisfied housecat. Riku laughed at him and flopped his head onto the pillow.

"What?" Sora frowned. "Don't you laugh at me! I'm genetically engi_neered_ to make videogames." Riku raised an eyebrow, and Sora started counting off with his fingers. "I'm part Japanese," he said, "And they're all…big on technology and stuff. And I'm French, and they're artists, and I'm part American and they…they…play videogames!"

"And me?" Riku asked him. "What do I do, if I'm part islander and part Japanese?"

Sora frowned. "Hm," he said, "I think you have a carte blanche there."

Riku exhaled through his nose (the hot air tickled the inside of his nostrils), and stared out the window above Sora's head. He ran his fingers up and down Sora's side absently, taking some secret pleasure in that he _could_. It felt nice to have a person to touch. He figured that was the appeal of having company. You just couldn't keep yourself amused, most of the time. There was a world of difference between one and two.

Sora shivered underneath him. Riku blinked, looked down at him; he stilled his hand. "Sora?"

"Mm, nothing," Sora said, eyes closed. "That feels good…"

Riku thought you only shivered when you were cold.

Sora head-butted him under the chin. "Don't st_op_!" he muttered. "Jeez."

He chuckled and kept running his fingers up and down Sora's side. "You're like a whiny puppy." His boyfriend snorted.

Sora opened his eyes and looked up at Riku; he smirked. Riku ran his fingers up his ribs, and he closed his eyes and shivered again. He opened them. It was a funny pattern.

"Hm," Sora said lazily, looking at Riku.

"What?"

Sora squirmed until he was sitting up on one elbow; he reached one hand out to run his hand through Riku's hair, which still felt too short since he'd cut it. He sat up, leaning his back against the headboard, stared down at Riku with his round face. Riku stared back up at him.

(Riku's eyes were a funny color.)

"Just thinking," Sora said. He half-smiled, the crook of one side of his mouth pulled up as if on a string, and he leaned over Riku so far that he had a forearm resting on either side of Riku's head. "I mean…hm."

Sora kissed Riku (kissed Sora.)

_Oh God,_ thought Riku.

He tensed. For one thing, dream kisses were _way different_ from real-life ones. Or at least, for him they were. Post-dream, anyways. Everything was much more…real. He was so much more self-aware. It was not all lips and hands. It felt wonderful; it tingled like having your foot fall asleep but with nerve endings instead of pinpricks, and it was distracting and heart-thumping and _does not happen,_ but did he feel the same way? Did Sora get the same things out of a kiss that Riku got? Was Riku doing it wrong? Were his lips too dry, should he be moving _more_ or _less_, was he disappointing, was Sora trying to tell him something?

So Riku Tepes tensed underneath Sora Goodwin.

Sora slowed down but didn't pull away. He backed off and not out. He used little nudges, and quick kisses, and he hovered over Riku, who felt like an animal being coaxed out of a hole.

Riku let him. Sora seemed to know what he was doing; let him take over. _I'll just…sit here and…uh, give him the reins. Mmhm. Good plan, me._

Two minutes later Riku's cell phone rang, and he promptly decided that he hated technology. After he'd dampened down the self-consciousness (_if it was so bad he wouldn't've kept going_) it had been very pleasant, even if it was a far cry from that dream.

He hated technology and Tuesdays.

Sora just laughed and pulled away, still lying on top of Riku. "Figures," he said, and Riku didn't know if he meant the kissing or the phone.

* * *

"Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn't hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor."  
- **Hugh Elliot**

**

* * *

**

It turned out that Kairi had called, which was better than the alternative (parents). She wanted to come over; she didn't want to spend her last day of winter vacation screwing around on the Internet, and she wondered if they were busy.

They weren't. Unless you counted the kissing, which they didn't see as particularly important business.

The first thing Kairi did when she came into the TV room and saw Riku and Sora sitting by either arm of the couch watching some crappy New Year's Eve special (it was five days till then, anyways) was sigh dramatically and sit between them, flinging her arms out to the side.

"Ah, it is good to see you, my young and innocent friends…" she said, rolling her head on the back of the couch.

"Uh-oh," Riku said apprehensively.

"Uh-oh is right," she said, perching an elbow on his shoulder. Kairi had smooth skin. She didn't even have any freckles or anything. Riku wondered if there were some girls who shaved their arms. "You two," she shoved a foot in Sora's lap, "Have no idea of the perils of my active teenage life! All you guys do is watch movies and make out."

"Nuh-uh," Sora pulled at her big toe. "We also go to the beach and Riku stops me from terrorizing crabs."

"You terrorize crabs?"

"When he finds them," Riku said, "He holds them up by one leg because he's afraid of getting pinched."

"You're supposed to hold them on either side of their shell!" Kairi chided Sora, who just threatened to tickle her feet if she didn't shut up about it. (2) "Anyways," she continued, "Must be nice."

Riku snorted. "You want a gay boyfriend of your very own?"

"Nah," she patted his knee, "You two are more than enough. I just…" she sighed for real now, and looked distantly at the wall. "…" Even her silence was audible.

"What is it?" Sora asked her, looking earnestly at his friend. _Ah, right, _Riku thought, _You have to ask what's wrong or they won't talk._

"You guys are really lucky," she said. "Since you've got each other. I mean, aside from the gay thing, you could be the poster couple for healthy relationships."

Riku snorted. That – _that_, he very much doubted, but perhaps for Kairi, it was just in comparison.

"And that's like…like, in _high school_, you almost _never_ find that. And I just…God, I dunno, it's just…" She groaned and wiped a hand across her face. "Maybe I've just got really awful taste in guys."

"Whoa," Riku said. "Hey. Seventh-grade-me is deeply insulted."

Kairi laughed a laugh that had been pressed and put through a strainer. But, perhaps like Sora, she too was not pulled off track when she had something to say. Riku wondered why he and Sora qualified as people to say it to. "There's this guy I really like," she said. "And I think he likes me back. You know, as more than a friend."

"So?" Sora nudged her foot. "What's the problem?"

She groaned again, long and exaggerated, and let her head slide down into Riku's lap. At this point, Riku thanked the heavens that he was decidedly not heterosexual. Kairi was about as aware of personal space as Sora.

"I _know_ it's stupid," she said. "I'd probably be miserable if we stayed together for more than a month or two. It's just a stupid high school crush and I wish it'd go away!"

"You don't _know_ that would happen," Sora said. "Right?"

She breathed in through her nose and closed her eyes; she breathed out through her mouth and opened them. "I do too. He's like…like me before I had to go to the hospital. Parties and drinking and, I-I don't know, he might even be a crackhead for all I know about him."

There was a long quiet. Riku had no intention of saying anything; given his track record, he'd just make things worse. And Hell, if Sora found this thing worth a mental chewing-over, no way he could help.

Kairi's head was like a warm basketball. It reminded Riku of having the cat in his lap. Only, then, he hadn't had much to worry about. It was a lot more awkward to have a girl's head in your lap.

"So what're you gonna do about it?" Sora asked at length.

"…nothing," Kairi said. "Wait until it goes away. I mean, at this point, with like six months left in the entirety of our high school lives, there's not much point starting a new relationship."

Riku felt a little pang when she said that. "Why?" he asked carefully. He stomach had sunk; he felt weird. It was funny how a conversation could go from teenage sympathy to horrible niggling worries about the future so quickly.

"Because it probably won't even be strong enough to like…I mean, at this point, what's the _point_?" She sighed. "I don't think I could handle a long-distance relationship anyways." Kairi licked her lips and looked at the ceiling. She squirmed a little bit, so that both of her feet were in Sora's lap. Her legs were bent at the knees, but she was wearing shorts. "I just…just wish I could _stop_ liking him so much, you know?"

"Yeah…" Sora smiled and looked at Riku, then back down at Kairi. "I've felt like that."

Riku hadn't. He'd never had to try to _stop_ liking _any_body. Really, it was the opposite. He wondered how it felt, liking someone and not being able to do anything about it. It must suck.

"Not like you guys," she said forlornly. "I can't even see you breaking up when you go to college."

"I don't…" Riku started. "I mean, we're…we're not…"

"Yeah," Sora said, "We'll probably not ending up going to the same college." Riku had been about to say that, but Sora saying it made it sting a little bit.

"I _know_…" Kairi said. She sounded whiny. "But honestly. I definitely can't see either of you _cheating_, or something, and I'd bet my tuition you'd find a way to stay together. Even if it's emails or, or video chats or something." She sighed for about the millionth time. "God, I hate being a teenager. Screw this. I'm not dating for the rest of the year. I'm just gonna be a fag-hag."

Riku rolled his eyes and clipped her gently on the back of the head. "Hey. Bad language."

Kairi started giggling, her eyes squeezed shut and her nose wrinkled. Kairi was pretty cute, in a bunny sort of way.

"What's 'fag' mean?" Sora asked. Kairi opened one eye, looked at him, and started to giggle harder. She rolled around on top of them both, or rather, swayed from side to side. "I'm serious! Kai­-_ri_!"

"It's…it's…" Kairi kept laughing.

"Ri-_ku_! What's it mean? I know what hag means."

"It's slang. Like fairy."

"Oh! So Kairi's a fag-hag because we're gay and she's a girl?"

"Yup."

Sora wrinkled his nose and tickled Kairi's feet, grinning when she started gasping for air ("Stop! Agh-ahahahaha! No fair!"). "That's stupid," he said.

* * *

(1) Adapted quotation from Orson Scott Card's _Ender's Shadow_. And I'm not looking up the page, I haven't read it in over a year and I don't even know where it is anymore.

(2) Actually that's not how you do it, either. There's a method to long-term crab-wrangling. Especially Asian shore crabs. Lousy things…very pretty, very mean.

* * *

A/N: Okay screw you and your long-ass chapters and your rock music and your _tight pants_. Fffff. This is ridiculous. I am wasting hours of your time. Next chapter should be shorter, yes? That is what I thought.

...thoughts? ANSWER ME.

I want to see if me predicting anything will affect the outcome of the reviews. My hypothesis:

Due to the lack of smut and Axel/Roxas in the chapter, especially near the end, the number of reviews per chapter will decrease to at or below the previous average.

Alternate hypothesis: the content of the chapter has relatively little bearing on the feedback, which is in direct correlation simply to the number/amount of readers.

Anyways. You don't have to review unless you feel like it; I always feel awkward leaving an obligatory review on a chapter. I'm like "is this an okay thing to say? Is this too long? God, I hope I'm not annoying the author here. Crap, now I can't think of anything to say. Is it okay to joke about that? Crap." (_I_ think it's cute, but I also think Christmas tree worms are cute, and I think fish are cute, so I really don't trust myself in these matters.)

Anyways. JOYOUS SEPTEMBER MON AMIE. Time to go read Don Quixote.


	16. It's Not So Bad if We're Stuck Together

* * *

**Maybe People Come Like Sodas in Packs of Six, or Six Billion.**

**

* * *

**A/N: Aaaand welcome to chapter-the-last of Rain Shadow. Yeah that only took me the length of _three normal novels_. But this is it. Sorry it took so long, but it's up now, so what's it matter what my excuse is?

(beeteedubs, my excuse can be described as _'OhmyGod this is the last chapter it's got to like sum everything up oh my FFFFFheavens what if it doesn't **do** that holy shit you guys. Aw, crap. Oh well, there's better stuff out there anyways. -pets it-'_ I get sentimental.)

Oh, and there's an epilogue. ...two epilogues.

OH WAIT. Yes. Haha. Are you aware of my friend muumuu122 from Winland. http: // img15 . imageshack . us / img15 / 5476 / rikujasora . jpg

She drew this prettypretty picture and now I think owns part of my soul? Is that how it works? I am pretty sure...that that is how it works. If that link doesn't work, I'm about to go put one on my profile.

Anyways, now I feel like one of those jerks who sits around in their author's notes gloating over reader stats, or number of alerts or reviews or something, and those people _really_ bother me because _hey dude way to make me feel like a faceless part of the unwashed masses, I can tell my reading of your story is really appreciated_. Pfft. IGNORE ME, I am sick with a cold. -coughcoughhackhack- oh look my lung.

Anyways. HAPPY READING.

* * *

_"We have the feeling of being confined - shut in; it is something like outgrowing a small town in a small country. The blue noonday sky, cloudless, has lost its old look of immensity. The word out that the sky is not limitless; it is finite. It is, in truth, only a kind of local roof, a membrane under which we live, luminous but confusingly refractile when suffused with sunlight; we can sense its concave surface a few miles above our heads. The color photographs of the earth are more amazing than anything outside: we live inside a blue chamber, a bubble of air blown by ourselves. The other sky beyond, absolutely black and appalling, is wide-open country, irresistible for exploration._

_Here we go, then."_

_- _**_Lewis Thomas, 'The Lives of a Cell'_**

_

* * *

_

When he was a little kid – really little, like seven, or eight – the house hadn't been big enough for each of them to have their own room. Him and his brothers, that was. So he'd had to share the room that led onto the roof. It didn't lead onto _all_ of the roof, just part of it, and it'd been turned into a study when they'd gotten a wing added on, but Riku remembered his father shooing them out into the hallway when he had to climb up there to clean out the gutters.

Riku remembered not understanding why his dad had needed them to leave the room, until his mother explained that it was dangerous up there. Seven-year-old Riku fancied that this was how the wives of sailors must have felt, standing bravely on the shore waiting for their men to return safely with worried looks on their faces.

But he hadn't really put _that_ much thought into it. Or at all, really. It was just a thing that happened in fall, and then he had his room back again.

So he didn't know why he ended up climbing up there. He just did it on a whim.

He switched the lights on in the room and closed the door; he pushed up the lower pane of the window with a slick wooden noise. He crawled through like an awkward panther ("grr, I'm a bulldog"), head and arms first then swerving his back under and pulling his butt and legs out last. He crouched and stood up.

Riku's roof was almost horrifically average. It was a peak, a flat part, and the less severely slanted part over the new wing. It had black and grey tiles, covered in tiny gravel. It was like walking on sandpaper and sheets of tar.

He was glad it was nighttime; the roof must be baking hot in the day. It was pleasantly cool now.

He could see the ocean from where he stood, sparkling like it just wanted to show you it could, and another island far away.

But the noises were people-based. Trees that people had planted, cars that people were driving, televisions that people were watching, dogs that people were walking. It surprised him how close to the ground he felt. If he stood at the very edge of the less-slanted part of the roof (not that he would) he was only ten feet above the sidewalk.

But oh, what ten feet they were.

(Exactly ten feet?)

They separated Riku from all of the nasty things in the whole world. They separated him from the people. Any armies coming for him would have to enter one-by-one through the yellow-lit room of the study, just an open square of window from where he was.

(Yes. Exactly ten feet.)

Riku Tepes began to pace tiredly. He never went less than two feet away from the nearest edge, which reduced his territory to a pitifully small rectangle of slightly slanted tiles. He stepped from them to the flat part of the roof.

It was just in front of the big peak Riku couldn't climb, and it held one of the chimneys (_Who wants a fire on an island?_ thought Riku). Instead of tile, here there was a flat expanse of black rubber. Riku supposed, for a flat roof, tile made no sense.

Sora's roof was white stucco. It had rims all around the edges, a few inches tall – in case you rolled off, Riku supposed. Like the roof was made for people. For lying down and trying to find shapes in the cloudless sky until an airplane flies above you.

And since it was white, it didn't get _that_-that hot, just mostly hot.

Riku's roof was built in the 1970s, and it was meant for keeping the rain from leaking down into the house. That was all. The roof was not meant for standing on and watching people walk their people-dogs and watching their pitiful little people-trees and feeling disgusted with yourself because you were a people, and it was yours, too.

Sometimes when Riku watched movies, he couldn't help but despise the people who wrote them. He could sit there and predict every single line, and tell you who died by the end of the movie, because sometimes they were so _cheesy _and _bad_ and _stupid_ and, quite literally, does-not-happen, and he couldn't believe that adults thought that movie-watchers were so undeniably thoughtless. He couldn't help feeling like he could have done better, and _he_ wouldn't touch creativity with a ten-meter pole.

And he wondered – especially lately – _were_ people really like that? Maybe he was the odd one out. Maybe he was right, when he hated everything. People and their stupid trees and their stupid dogs and their stupid fly swatters. Their little dead-bug stains on walls. God, he just…_hated_ – just…did.

The rubber of the flat part of the roof felt cool, just the tiniest bit squishy. He felt a little bit scared, because it didn't feel as solid as the tiles, somehow. Like he could fall through and into the living room at any moment. It wasn't as if anyone knew he was up there, even.

He wondered about that. It seemed like standing on the roof of a house in the suburbs – _standing_, not sitting and star-gazing or whatever – was pretty weird, wasn't it? People would think that was weird.

But not a _single _person – he knew, he knew the same way he knew what people were going to say in movies before they said it – was going to look up and notice a kid with snow-white hair and a stare that could cut right through a person, with jeans now washed of the stains from wet snow in Annecy on Christmas Eve. And he – God above, of all the things – he found it _funny_. He found it unspeakably hilarious that everyone in the entire world, including him, was willing to watch movies about people with magical powers or super abilities, but thought it was out of the question that there might be something on a roof besides tiles.

He took a sense of perverted, warped superiority that Sora could walk by _right now_ and not even _see_ him, or know he was there.

He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet; when he stood on his tiptoes, his jeans were so long that they touched the ground. He made little foot-tents of denim.

"I wonder," he said out loud to the sunset, "How loud can I talk before people will notice I'm up here?"

It wasn't that he was talking to himself, even. Or at least, not any more than he usually did – after all, he _heard_ himself talking, and understood what he was saying, but he did that in normal conversations.

(_So it's you against the world, Riku Tepes? Who do you actually think's gonna win?_)

He laughed again, quietly and for only a few seconds, staring at the additional rubber of the additional wing. It had a few dry white-ish spots from the sea spray.

"Can I shout?" he asked the world. Then he shouted: "How loud do I have to be before you turn around!" It wasn't an angry shout, not even a little bit. Riku Tepes was just a confused, lonely person, and he thought it was funny, standing up there. "Can I yodel!"

He grinned and stuck his hands in his pockets, then started pacing around the rectangle of extra roof. He trotted like a dog in a crate.

"This is my cage," he told the world. "And this is me pacing my cage." He stopped in front of the chimney, which seemed odd in all that expanse of rubber hidden behind the very normal peak of a tiled roof of a forty-year-old house on Destiny Island. It was bricks and mortar; that was all. Seemed…oddly old-fashioned.

He leaned against one side of the chimney, which was three feet taller than Riku-standing-on-a-roof, but otherwise felt just like a very narrow wall. Riku thought about mortar dust getting stuck in his hair.

"This," he said, banging his head very softly against the chimney, "Is me marking my territory!" He laughed again because he sounded ridiculous, and nobody could hear him.

He idly wondered if this was crazy. Talking when there was nobody around. Everybody seemed to think that talking to yourself was something only deranged, crazy weirdoes did, or social outcasts, awkward lonely people and the elderly. He didn't understand why, though. What was so wrong with it? He was just speaking his thoughts out loud. He wasn't arguing with inanimate objects. He was just thinking.

And what did it matter, since nobody could hear him anyways?

"This is me roaring," he whispered. "I'm not very loud, because I don't want to scare anyone." Riku didn't expect the world to care, and was relieved when he heard a couple of girls walk by on the sidewalk on the other side of the roof, chatting.

He sighed and slid down the chimney (his shirt rode up on his back) and sat down on the black rubber with his knees bent, his arms draped over them. From this side, the peak of the roof was to his left, and the less-steep part was behind him. And he could see the sunset, sort of. A tree blocked the actual sun part, but he could see the pink clouds and the orange sky and all that shit.

Sunsets were the thing that movies couldn't exaggerate, but Riku still didn't see the big deal. They were pretty, and all, but so what? What did you do with a sunset? It didn't change your life, and it happened all the time. The sun was always setting somewhere. People just liked pretty things, he supposed.

He supposed there was…nothing wrong with that, really. As long as he wasn't expected to fawn over how romantic they were.

He rolled his head to the side and stared at the four feet of black rubber before the sheer dropoff that was the side of the house. His eyes drifted blankly over the lawn, which was mostly crabgrass now, and the cheap wooden swing set with yellow swings.

"This is my cage," he said again, quietly, with his hands on either side of his slumped body. He picked at a sliver of mortar coming loose on the chimney. "But they're opening the doors in a couple of days."

The mortar actually came out in a frighteningly palm-length hardened piece of concrete, nearly an inch thick, and heavy in his fingers. Riku dropped it guiltily next to him and stared at the tiled, peaked part of the roof as if he expected his mother to be standing there with her arms crossed.

You could do anything you wanted if you were high up enough, because nobody ever looked.

Two days until high school graduation seemed like not-enough-days. He wasn't even really affected by it. He had one summer to pack up all his things and move into the dorms, and then there he would be. He'd never really felt very attached to this island, even – it was not home, it was "where Riku lived". He supposed, when people asked him where he was from as people inevitably did, he couldn't say "the flat part of the roof on the dry side of the island". He'd have to say "Destiny Islands," even if it didn't feel very true. Riku carried his world with him. It was just that it was so small it fit on his shoulders.

But he kept coming back to the topic, in his mind. Like if he thought about it enough it would just resolve itself, or something. Hell if he knew.

He looked back to the piece of loose mortar, shifted forward so he could twist around and look at the chimney. Probably, all of the mortar was loose mortar. It wasn't a wonder it held up, though. There was hardly any wind, and it wasn't as it anything came up here.

It was like a desert made of tiles. There was some dead leaf litter, orange pine needles blown into a tiny triangular pile against one corner of the roof, and a whirligig or two. But that was all.

He picked up the piece he'd pulled out and started scratching at the rubber. Dust from the mortar rubbed off and made little scratchy lines.

_Arctic_, he wrote, on the rubber with the mortar dust. He couldn't write particularly well with just the people-rock and the people-roof, and the letters were uneven and got bigger towards the end. The C's were so big they looked capitalized, so really, he wrote _ArCtiC_, which made it look sort of falsely artsy.

"My whole life fits into ten boxes and a very full backpack," Riku told the word dully. He rubbed the mortar against the side of the chimney until chunks started breaking off. "And nothing is even going to _change_ at college."

Twenty feet away, a squirrel ran across a telephone wire and leapt into a tree.

* * *

He decided, that night, that he might be able to wake up easier the next morning if he left the shades of one of the windows open. So that the light would wake him up, instead of his lazy teenage-boy body.

But it just made it harder to fall asleep, really.

Riku couldn't remember having much trouble getting to sleep in freshman year, or even sophomore, or the first half of junior. And he wasn't _stupid_, he knew _why_. Or at least he knew mostly why. Probably why, at least.

Because when it's just you in your world, you don't have anything to worry about. You don't care about dating, friendship, drama, teachers, brothers, you didn't care about moths and late-night Tuesday hospital visits and getting chips from the vending machine at the exact wrong time. You didn't care about having to hold a one-year-ago-maybe-gay boy with a hand covered in bandages who was trying not to sob for about the millionth time that day.

Maybe that was it.

Maybe it was the sickly orange light of the street lamps, turning Riku's blue room redyellow and reflecting dully off of his fingernails. It hit the face of his watch and made a little oval of light on the ceiling above it. Riku tried moving it around a little, and pretended it was a fairy.

* * *

"To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive."  
- **Robert Louis Stevenson**

**

* * *

**

"It doesn't even seem, like…_possible_. You know what I mean? Like I _know_ school's over tomorrow, but it still hasn't sunk in, sort of." Kairi sighed and tugged on Riku's arm. "Hey. No zoning out." She snapped her fingers in front of his face.

Kairi and Riku were hanging out, just them, no Sora.

Riku was tired. Fitful sleep did that to you.

He'd never really thought of the school as a place to hang out any longer than you humanly could. He felt…unwelcome, in the barest sense of "you're a teenager, and we only tolerate you during school hours." It had never occurred to him to get ice cream from the truck that parked next to the school just as it let out and then _not_ get on his bus. It had never occurred to him to take his oreo milkshake and walk with Kairi to the fields and lean up against a soccer goal and stare at the dead patches of grass.

He didn't want to do anything special to celebrate the end of the school year. He didn't really feel like he'd earned it. He was not sentimental; the most he could muster about the entire situation was "Man, I guess me and Sora won't see Kairi as much anymore."

But he kept thinking about it.

"Ri_ku_!" Kairi made to kick him in the knee, swinging her foot back and pretending to aim carefully with one eye squeezed shut before kicking forward.

"Agh! I'm not zoning out! Jeez, woman!" He flinched and drew his legs in, leaning against the post of the goal and clutching his milkshake. The soccer goal was smaller than he remembered it being when he was a soccer-playing eight-year-old. It was completely rational in his mind, of course; childhood smallness combined with exaggeration would have magnified it in his memories. But he couldn't help feeling…disappointed.

Mayflies hovered like clouds in the air.

"You _so_ were. You had that same look on your face that you did for the first half of junior year."

He frowned. "What, the 'everything-is-dead-to-me' look?" he joked, but she just rolled her eyes.

Grass was deceiving. It looked like a thick green shag rug when you were standing; it looked comfortable and squishy for sitting on, and as reliable as the chair in a hospital that you use to accidentally-kill a moth. But when he'd sat down, it had proved patchy, uncomfortably damp with fog, and almost as much dirt as plant. He couldn't shake the feeling that his butt was streaked with mud right then.

Right next to him, between the actual posts of the goal, the grass was almost entirely dead and pale tan. Like hay. And the goal itself was full of holes; the netting was stained brown. He looped his fingers through it and let them weigh the squares of rope down, turning them into soft, uneven arrow shapes.

"I guess it is weird," he said quietly, after a long pause. "I mean…" he let out a breath. "Because before, it's never been like this. I mean, even when middle school ended, we just had to go an extra block to get to the high school." He started idly tapping his foot against the ground, but he didn't have any pattern in mind.

"Yeah…" Kairi came and sat down, cross-legged, next to him. She wrapped her hands around her ankles and looked straight up at the rim of the goal post, and the sky. "Where are you going, again? I mean, place, not school."

"Washington," Riku said plainly. He'd learned to expect mixed reactions for his school of choice. People who weren't going to college didn't really care, and beyond that, if you were talking to another kid your age they'd compare their college to yours (even if they didn't say it out loud). And if you were talking to an adult who'd graduated, they'd start telling you all about their college. Or asking stupid questions. 'Oh, what are you majoring in?' As if he knew.

But Kairi just clicked her tongue (her throat made a gulping motion) and said, "…America, huh?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "America."

"Any reason, really?"

He shrugged. "I guess…well, they speak English, and it's…closer than England. So, I dunno. It just seemed like the obvious choice." He hadn't really thought of it as a 'choice,' even; it had just seemed a given. Riku Tepes, you are going to go to this school, now, let's get your passport updated. Oh, that's right, honey, you took that France trip…okay, let's file the paperwork for a student visa.

It had just sort of happened.

There were a few clouds, in the mountains to the west. Riku couldn't tell for sure, really, but it would probably rain soon. Not for a few days, but soon. He wondered if he ought to do something special when it did. Last rain as a resident on the island. But he couldn't think of anything to do.

The milkshake in his hand was cold, and water was condensed around the outside of the cup. When he put it down on the ground, it came up sprinkled with grass clippings and dead leaves on the bottom. Just a few, though, sticking to the water.

"That makes sense," Kairi said. "Hey…do birds sing when it rains?"

Riku blinked hard and turned to look at her. "Do…what?"

She shrugged and shivered, because she was wearing a short skirt and a tanktop. "I've always noticed that…I mean, that even on the wet half, like, when it rains, you don't hear anything but the rain. But is that because the rain's really loud or like, because everything stops singing?"

He raised an eyebrow and stared at her. 'Can birds still sing when it rains?' Goddamit, he was contagious, wasn't he? The thought made Riku laugh. "You sound like Sora," he told her. She was still staring up at the sky, but when he said that she frowned and looked at him.

"Naw," she said, making a face. "I do _not_."

"You do," he countered. "He's always saying weird like…weird…" he laughed. "You know, poetic-y things and stuff."

"He is?"

It occurred to him (and, really, not without some amount of smugness) that maybe Sora wasn't like that with everyone. Maybe only Riku, because he thought Riku would listen, or…or because he knew Riku would know that Sora didn't want to kill himself, just because he talked about it. "Sometimes," Riku amended. "Maybe I'm reading too much into it."

"Yeah," Kairi agreed with him, which he hadn't really wanted her to do. It seemed odd, saying something and expecting someone to contradict you, but he had and he did.

"What do you mean?" Her question seemed innocent enough, sitting on the trick grassdirt with her hands around her ankles. She shifted awkwardly until she was sitting with her knees together and her feet to the side.

Riku wondered what the point of wearing such a short skirt was, if it was so inconvenient for her. He could understand wearing shorts, but skirts just seemed like an extra hassle. Maybe his opinion was skewed. For one thing, he'd never worn a skirt, short or long, and he didn't really ever intend to try. Maybe it was about looking pretty – or no, not pretty, sexy. Right? If that was the case, no wonder he'd never appreciated girls in short skirts.

But maybe it was like popular music, or backsides, or Crocs. Maybe everybody was stupid, or maybe he just didn't get it because something was wrong with him.

It'd been a good thirty seconds since she'd asked him, and he wondered if that was too much time to answer. But it was Kairi; she was probably used to him.

"I dunno," he said. "I mean I can't really describe it, but sometimes he says stuff like that, about birds singing in the rain or something. Like…" he tried to think of an example that he could tell her, but he couldn't think of a good one. It just seemed to obvious, there. You didn't _explain_ Sora. He just was. "I can't think of anything right now," he confessed.

"Ugh, I hate that," Kairi sympathized with him. "When you really get something, but you can't really explain it to someone else?" Riku nodded, even though that wasn't really what he meant. He figured, a forest would be boring, if all the trees were the same height. "It's like describing the color blue to a blind guy," she finished.

Yes, Riku thought, there would some kinds of blue you could only say were oughtta-sky.

But that worked, now that he considered it. If you told a blind man that Sora Goodwin had eyes the color the sky oughtta be, the color of tiny windows in a church on a street on a class trip in the snow, then he could pick any color his mind wanted and it would be right.

Kairi breathed out slowly through her nose, forgetting the question. In a remarkably Sora-to-Riku gesture, she slumped to the side and set an elbow on his shoulder.

He wondered what she was thinking about, but without much conviction. Kairi was a very talkative person, generally speaking – not that there was anything wrong with that, he schooled his mind. Just because they're not _your_ thoughts doesn't make them _worse_, said a Sora in his mind. But anyways, Kairi being quiet just felt funny.

"So," he said, "Any progress with that guy?" There had been a few more sessions of Kairi complaining to them about Mr. Pretty-hair-perfect-ass and why she didn't want to like him. He knew it was awful, but he felt sort of like he was observing the life of a normal teenager from his post of antisocial fairy, hiding in his bubble. Curled up like an armadillo, or a butterfly stuck in a chrysalis.

God. Fuck butterflies. They were always a goddamn metaphor for everything, and Riku Tepes hated them. Nobody every smushed a butterfly against a sink.

Why did he always have to come _back_ to that?

"Ugh…" she groaned like a sleepy cat, closed her eyes and thumped her forehead against his shoulder. "Don't even ask…" he'd figured out that this meant he should keep asking.

"Aw, well now I'm curious," he said, swinging an arm casually around her shoulders. She gave him a skeptical look and he grinned. "C'mon, tell fag number two what the problem is. Who'm I gonna tell?"

"Nothing to tell, really," she said, cheek against his shoulder. "We flirted at a party, about a week ago, but I left early, because people were starting to get…you know, drunk and stuff." She smiled. "You trained me well."

"Mm…" Riku made a noncommittal grunting noise.

"'S true what they say, I guess," she continued. "All the good ones are either married or…"

Riku chuckled. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe."

Kairi laughed. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe, maybe, maybe…"

They were quiet for a while, but not too long, really. It was the comfortably awkward silence of two people trying to think of what to say.

"Hey," she was the first to speak, naturally. "So, you would describe yourself as gay, right?"

"Well…yeah," he lied. "I guess."

* * *

When Sora finally showed up, the first thing he did after apologizing for having to help his foster mom out around the house was comment on the weather. Honest to God, like an old lady at bingo. Like two coworkers.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his baggy shorts; Sora was primary colors and confusing buckles today. He had on big shoes and fingerless gloves, though Riku didn't know why.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, stared at the sky and said, "Cloudy, huh?"

"Mm," said Kairi.

"Yup," said Riku.

Sora kept staring at the sky for a few seconds, blinking, with his mouth puckered. "I wonder if it'll still be cloudy when we graduate."

Kairi laughed and straightened out her shirt, twisting a piece of dyed red hair around her finger. Riku just waited, with hand slung through the net of the goal and the other hand around his melted milkshake, which he hadn't really wanted, anyways.

He watched his friend; watched the human cogs of his mind turn behind the solid opaqueness of his forehead.

"I hope it is," he said. "Cloudy, I mean. That would be…I dunno. Fitting."

"I hope it rains," Riku said, and when Kairi looked at him he smiled. She smiled back at him laughed silently.

"Yeah?" Sora sort of slowly made his way over to Riku, thoughtfully and randomly, twining their fingers together through the soccer netting. The braiding of the thin rope pressed into Riku's hand, and Sora's palms were hot through his gloves. "Why?"

"Dunno," Riku truthed. "It would just be…nice, I guess."

* * *

When they went to the mall (the mall was three clothing stores and a Radioshack), Kairi walked between them. She joked about three-way-dates.

"Gosh, me n' Riku, dating _Kairi_? But…but she's so _pretty_…d'you really think she'd like _us_?" Sora's eyes were big and wide, with one hand over his heart and the other over Kairi's shoulders, touching Riku's arm.

They walked together in a line, like a big, awkwardly calibrated machine with an inner-ear problem.

"Hey," Kairi said, "Right now, we are so those people I hate in school."

Riku wrinkled his nose and had difficulty understanding. Kairi was so…_Kairi_, wasn't she? Kairi had about a million friends. Kairi was on all the social networking sites with people vying for her attention, probably. "What, friends?"

She shook her head, "No, of course not! But we're like…_line-walking_. You know? So anyone who want to walk around us can't. I have so been late to class when I got stuck behind those."

"Oh, you should walk with Riku, then," Sora said, taking his arm off her shoulders to stick his thumb through his belt loop and pull his pants up a little more. "People can feel his death-glare in the back of their heads, and he just parts the adolescent sea." Kairi laughed.

There was an odd moment.

Well…a _more_ odd moment, ten inches tall if it stood on its tippy-toes:

Kairi with her arm around Riku's shoulders, Sora with his hand in his pocket and a smile on his face. Riku had his arm over Kairi's shoulders, too. The sun wasn't setting, but it was low down enough in the sky that everything stretched sideways. The thin shadows of telephone wires fuzzed over the street in odd scallops. And they kept walking.

"Ah, hang on," she said, stopping and hopping on one foot. She kept one hand on Riku's shoulder and grabbing her ankle. "I think I have a rock in my shoe." She wasn't really wearing _shoes_. She was wearing…soft ballet slippers, if anything. They barely covered her toes, and they had little bows in the front. They looked sort of inconvenient, and probably uncomfortable.

"Ugh," she rolled her eyes and pulled it off her foot, heel first. She held it upside down and tapped the side a few times until a little piece of gravel fell out. "God, these shoes are so uncomfortable."

"Then why do you wear them?" Sora's eyebrows were drawn together, and he did a funny thing with his mouth.

"Because they…I dunno," Kairi shrugged. "They _look_ nice." Sigh. "Screw this," her mutter was surprisingly dark, and she set her naked foot down on the ground and lifted the other one up, and she pulled her shoe off. Hooking one each on her fore and middle fingers, she slung her arm over her shoulder.

"You're gonna walk barefoot?" Sora didn't sound surprised so much as curious.

"Yeah. 'S just the sidewalk." She shrugged. "C'mon, guys, walk me home before you go on your little date or wherever!"

Kairi turned around and started walking backwards with her tongue stuck out. With her shoes slung over one shoulder and her feet bare.

Riku'd never gone down to the mall much; not ever, really. He hadn't needed to. But he was familiar with the place. The buildings were brick and dust, though their owners had made an effort at planting trees on the sidewalks.

Everywhere (had) looked the same.

It was dust, and dirty sidewalk, and hot, thick air. Everything like brown and like dry.

But maybe it was him, that made it look different. He noticed how it smelled vaguely of perfume from the beauty salon across the street, and how when Kairi walked backwards into the sunset, with her face to them, her whole head was outlined in pink and orange. How her face looked like a silhouette.

"Are you sure that's okay?" was what he said, though. "I mean, on the sidewalk…besides, people probably want you to be wearing shoes if you go into their stores." Sora looked at him funny, and Riku knew why.

"Yeah, sure," she waited for them to catch up, still facing away from the sunset. "Haven't you ever seen a girl carrying her heels after a party?" Riku got an image of a woman grasping her actual heels and sort of rolling across the grass before he realized she meant shoes. "It's not weird or anything. It's totally normal."

Sora blinked hard and looked at her very seriously. "It's not?"

"Not really Like, for girls? Nah."

"Oh, well," Sora said that like it solved everything, and sat his ass on the ground before pulling off his shoes. "Perfect!"

Riku kthought about it and laughed; he kicked his sandals off. "Yeah," he said. "'S only _fair_ , Kairi."

--

"This is nice," Sora said. "I like this. I wanna walk down all my roads barefoot." Barefoot and curled up. His boyfriend took it at face value.

* * *

"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth."  
- **Alan Watts**

**

* * *

**

The beaches on Destiny Island had black sand. They had a little white, beach-colored sand, too, so when you were far away it looked grey. Like a volcano had erupted and everywhere was ash. Like solid smoke.

But if you came and sat down right in the solid smoke and the ash, you could see the black and the beach-color, and they were separate, and sparkled. They had something to prove they wore no shoes.

The black sand was heavier, and harder to wash away; past the tideline there were stripes of darker and lighter grey, depending on where the white sand got stuck.

They sat right on the tideline, him and Sora, and the dried seaweed went _crunch_ under their butts when they did.

It was such a real beach, was the thing. It wasn't yellow with palm trees. It was grey.

"It's not gonna be…" Sora said. "It's not gonna be _so_ bad. College. Even if we're not…"

"Yeah," Riku said, sore that it was being brought up. He had a sort of hot, heart-squeezy feeling in his stomache and his chest.

"I mean, I mean Kairi's gonna be pretty far, but I'm…we're only – I mean, you'll be two towns away. Or is it one? There's…my college is like on the outside of…and then after that, there's another town, and then you, right?"

"I guess so," he replied. "I guess that's only a couple of hours."

"Exactly! One if I speed." Sora was doing his it's-all-okay-if-we-talk-it-to-death thing. Riku kind of appreciated it, though. He didn't want Sora to sit next to him and ask him why he was alive if nothing was even important (_Universally_, Riku. Tu m'aimes, Ri-_ku_?). Or be asked about dying with no shoes on, and socks were funny, weren't they, because they only let you feel shapes, but you still feel the sock? He didn't want to pretend it would…all be the same.

"So, we won't have classes together, sure, but we'll see each other on the weekends. And holidays. Maybe even at night." Sora beamed like a kid in kindergarten. "We'll be…it'll be fine."

"I know," Riku said. He was almost insulted that Sora had to sit there and keep _telling_ himself how fucking _fine_ it was going to be. For one thing, Riku thought, what if it wasn't? They could say they'd meet up over the weekend, but maybe one of them would have a project when the other one was free, or it was raining, or they just didn't get around to it.

So there, Sora.

What if it's _not_ all okay?

Sometimes, when he was in school, in a class, he felt like sticking his head into the sand like an ostrich. Or maybe just slipping his shoes off under his desk where nobody could see.

Of course it would be okay. Sora had to make everything okay, Riku knew. He had to make everything okay or he would go nuts.

"I know that, Sora," he said again, quietly. Sora nodded at him and leaned into his shoulder. So, Riku brought his arm up around Sora's shoulders. Not because of any obligation, really, just more because he could.

Last day, his ass. Like they'd never say stupid, half-baked, so-called philosophical things to each other anymore? As if the world was _ever_ even that clear-cut about _anything_!

Riku knew. He knew, he knew, he knew. Nothing ever really left, not ever. Not even dead people, if they were leaving beautiful, horrible, wonderful, irritating, amazing, inexplicably _there_ children around willy nilly like this.

_God_. He just…feelings were kind of annoying when you had them. They were kind of really annoying when he was all happy and peaceful and then not and then again.

"Every time I talk to one of the parents," Sora stuck his hand in the sand and dug it in, scrunching and unscrunching his fingers. His knuckles appeared and disappeared. "They end up saying something about like, our whole lives being ahead of us, or…" He made a _brrr_ horse noise through his lips. "Everyone says…" Sora bit his lip and then un-bit it, staring at his toes. "Everyone says we're so young, you know? Prime of our lives and everything. But sometimes," and here he sighed, a sort of long, pitiful, well-thought-out Sora-sigh. "Sometimes I feel old. I just feel really…really, old."

Riku snorted. "That's because," he said sagely, "You've been alive all your life." And you haven't been alive a minute longer, so it's all you know.

"Ha!" Sora laughed out loud with his eyes squeezed shut. "God, we really are rubbing off on each other!" He held his stomach and laughed at himself, looked at Riku and smacked him playfully on the shoulder.

"You're weird," Riku said, taking his hand off Sora's shoulders and lacing his fingers behind his head. He lay down on the blackwhitegrey sand like that.

"Yeah, well," Sora shrugged and rolled on top of him, with his arms folded on Riku's chest. "You're a freak, Riku Tepes." He smiled. He kissed Riku on the nose, and Sora's lips were soft and warm, and he smelled like vegetables. Like picking pumpkins for Halloween. He kissed Riku on the lips.

"Hm," said Riku. "Yeah."

"Yeah," Sora said it just for something to say. "But you're my freak." Almost as a convenience, just because they lined up, they kissed again. "It's still weird," he said after a pause, quietly. "College, I mean. Feels like I…just got here. And now I have to leave?"

Yes, Sora, you do. Even though you feel really, really old.

(Sora talked about suicide and about getting disgustingly old. _Old and I'll have skin like on my knuckles all over. I'll be creasy and gross. That's how old I'm gonna get._)

"What do you mean?"

Sora rolled off him and copied his pose, with his hands behind his head and his elbows sticking out to the sides. He lifted one hand and started ticking things off. "Well, I mean, I woke up in the hospital, and then Roxas left, and I got adopted, and we moved, and I started going to a new high school," he left his five fingers out and pulled up his other hand to continue the list. "And then there was you, and Kairi, and then a million other things about you, and now college…" he sighed and stuck his arms behind his head again. "I'm just waiting for everything to stop zipping around in the air." His voice was squeezy and tight, like his heart felt the same way Riku's did.

"I feel like I've been waiting for about a million years, Riku Tepes," real quiet he said that.

Without saying so much as 'yeah,' Riku rolled to the side and put his head on Sora's chest, tucked under his chin. He could hear his friend's heart. Thumpadabumpadabumpadabump. It was slow and steady like pulling a stream of water over a bunch of smooth rocks. Or like rain.

He watched the ocean lapping at the sand, with quiet _slup, woosh_ sounds, still receding. Watched them from Sora's chest, and he could see a little thin hill where Sora's ribs stopped and his abdomen started, described by the washed out red of his shirt.

He heard the breath Sora took just before he spoke. Felt the words on the tip of his tongue. "You know how we were supposed to write really short notes and then but them in those stupid wish bottle things?" he asked Riku. And they'd had to do that, every person in their grade, a little phrase or word of advice or memory on a slip of paper, sealed in a tiny little bottle and then, they were told, getting released into the sea. Which Riku thought was ridiculous, pointlessly sentimental, and frankly bad for the environment. But they'd done it anyways.

"Yeah, I know," he said.

"What did you write?"

Riku shrugged lying down. "I forgot."

"Oh," Sora said. "Oh."

And, because it was expected of him, Riku asked, "What did you write?"

Sora sighed, and Riku felt it on his head and had a funny moment where he remembered freaking out about having Sora's head on his lap a really long time ago. Funny, only because he couldn't pinpoint the moment where it stopped being such a weird thing to do.

"It took me a really long time," Sora said. "And all I could come up with…I wrote that people need people." He punctuated each word by stabbing at the air with his finger. People-need-people.

After a pause, Riku sighed and laughed. "Sure," he said. "Real original."

Sora didn't seem at all put off by his skepticism. "Well," he said, lacing his fingers behind his head, "No teenager was ever famous for his ground-breaking philosophy."

Riku pursed his lips together briefly and licked his lips; he could just taste his lunch. Ham sandwiches left your mouth tasting like bread and hot metal. "I've never gotten that," Riku said quietly. "Ground-breaking whatever. I always figured you'd fall if you kept breaking the ground. I mean, when I was a little kid, I thought it actually meant breaking the ground. So I wondered what people stood on."

He raised himself off Sora and onto his elbows to watch the dead sunset. And Sora, he raised his hand up like he wanted to touch Riku, but he didn't.

So there they were.

Staring together from the same side of the line, two boys, not touching on a beach.

"You always…" Sora tucked his arms behind his head. "You always sound so unsure when you say things like that."

"Like what?"

"Like what you just _said_," Sora said, and his voice was punctuated with dry sarcasm. Uncharacteristic.

"I don't mean to," Riku fingered the hem of his shirt. He rolled the cloth against itself.

Sora closed his eyes, and he pretended, somewhere way far away hiding in the very back of his mind, standing on its tippy-toes and whispering, that he could hear the communal chatter of people on a rocky beach in northern France. The _Ouais, je viens_ and _Attends-moi!_ Only he didn't pretend Riku wasn't there, he just pretended Riku was quieter and closer.

"I know," Sora said, "I figure it's just…it's just how you are. It's just not how I am. I kind of…I kind of like that."

"Huh." Something on a rock way away cawed and made a splashing noise, and Riku watched the clouds coming from over the mountains in a painfully slow, soft, well-rounded rolling.

So, they were quiet again, for a while, and Riku wondered if that was okay. How could you tell if it was a comfortable silence, if you'd only ever had the uncomfortable kind? He wanted to know how far he had to come out of his Riku-turtle-shell to be able to taste the difference in the air when everyone was happy.

But Sora didn't look too worried. So, maybe Riku didn't have to be, either.

"I've changed my mind," Sora said after a while, and he licked his lips, drawing loop-de-loops in the sand with his finger. "About living, I mean."

The entirety of Riku's chest condensed, felt like a block of concrete dropped onto his liver. He imagined a hard little block of solid organs. "S-…Sora…?"

"No, no, not like _that_," Sora undid Riku's wound-up stomach with a wave of his hand. "I mean about…about _why_, I guess." Sora, rocking back on his butt, digging his fingers into the sand to keep himself steady, reminded Riku of something he didn't remember. Which was kinda funny.

"There's this guy," Sora said. "Alan Watts. He…he died when he was, w- before he even turned sixty. Heh," a funny little laugh. "Have you ever noticed how there are all these awesome people who died way too young, for no reason at all, really? But…he says," he took a short little breath. "He says that basically, there's no point to living. But that that doesn't mean we shouldn't be _doing_ it. There's no point in having fun, either, but we love doing that. So he says, he says we should just make sure that everything we do is fun – not only do fun things, but to just…be…_think_, that everything you're doing is a game, because it's only work if – if you…think that you _have_ to do it. So as long as…"

And here he laughed, like he was having a sudden realization _laughed_, with a bright and happy and chopped sound. "So as long as you know that life _is_ pointless, I think, that you don't _have_ to be doing it for _any_ reason at all, it's just like…that _is_ the point! It's fun because you aren't being _forced_ into it."

Riku rolled his eyes and stopped listening halfway through. Sora was rationalizing something. Sora thought his thoughts out loud, because that was just how he processed everything. Riku was his quiet machine-forehead snow-haired green-eyed glare-that-cut-right-through-you thought-cooker and. And. Maybe that was okay.

He tuned in, though, just at the end. "No more 'life-is-revenge'?" he asked quietly.

"No," Sora leaned into his shoulder, two boys on a beach, touching. "That was stupid. Taking revenge on the whole universe would be like taking revenge on myself." Riku shrugged him off his shoulder, because Sora was heavy, and his breath tickled Riku's ear, and the clouds were coming in slow like on a conveyor belt.

"I'll just hover in the middle," Sora said. "I'll just be happy without anybody else having to acknowledge it." (1) He coughed a little, swatted at a fly and tugged his t shirt higher up on his shoulders. "_And_," he said. "I've decided that when we grow up," – when we grow up, like he was five years old and wanted to be an astronaut, or a cowboy, or a vet, or a kid with parents – "We're gonna be that old gay married couple down the street," with his hands laced behind his back and his eyes closed. "And we're never gonna mow our lawn."

"'Zat so?"

"Is so, Riku Tepes. And I think we should have like seven cats."

"Nah," Riku rolled onto his side to look at Sora. "I think we should have some dogs, and a really big fish tank, and one of those birds that only says swear words."

"How many dogs?"

"Six. That way we have eight things total. Eight's a lucky number."

"Really?"

They spent their last sunset as high schoolers talking about the kinds of pets crazy old gay men would have, and how instead of planting rows of flowers, they'd mix up a bunch of seeds they bought at the store and just throw them all over the front yard to see what sticks.

Which, when he thought about it, was a pretty damn good way to spend it.

* * *

"I've grown certain that the root of all fear is that we've been forced to deny who we are."  
- **Frances Moore Lappe**

**

* * *

**

Riku wore all black on the last day of school.

He didn't mean to. He just woke up and grabbed what came first, which was a black shirt, with long sleeves, and dark grey jeans. He didn't bother changing out of them, or anything. Wasn't as if it mattered if people thought he was being emo.

Does not happen.

He laughed because of how little it mattered, quietly, and inside of himself, because they were shuffled out of (the big mouth that swallowed people up and spat them out older) the doors of the building and onto the grass outside with ten minutes left of school. It occurred to Riku, as he stood with his class and looked for more suitable people to stand with (and really, there were only two) that he really ought to feel…a little more excited. Or scared, this close to the inevitable mark. But he wasn't. Not even a tiny little bit. He was kind of disappointed in himself, still so closed off he couldn't feel a thing.

It wasn't raining. First time in two years – that was all, two years – that clouds had crept up over the mountains and just kept going off to the other side of the archipelago. So you could look up and watch them, whitelight and wispy-flavored, with stiff peaks like soft-serve ice cream, being slowly dragged across the sky. It was calming, sort of.

The sky was blue and the grass was green, and the building was brown, and Riku Tepes was French fucking White. And he thought he saw Sora a couple of times before he really did see him.

"Hey!" He jumped a little before turning around, even though he knew it was Sora. It was like getting completely absorbed in a videogame and having someone knock on your door. "Whoa, Riku, you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, 'm fine." Digging his fingers into his hair, Riku squeezed his toes in his sneakers. "You just surprised me."

Sora hung his arm around Riku's shoulders. "'Kay," he said, and that was that. "So, Riku Tepes, you excited?"

Riku shrugged, and today was one of those days where the wind was exactly the temperature of your skin. "Not really," he said it like a confession. He shoved his hands in his pockets like he was mad at himself for beint so apathetic. "I mean, I guess, but I don't feel all that excited."

"Meh," Sora said clearly. "Just do your thing."

_Ten…_

They started shouting all together as soon as the principal announced it. Ten seconds left! Exactly ten seconds until you're an adult!

_"Nine…"_

Riku realized that he hadn't actually said 'ten,' or even 'nine,' and he felt like he'd already missed his chance. No point in starting at eight, really, but he did.

"_Eight_…"

Each number carried with it a sort of weight. The weight of thirteen years of public school with the exact same people, plus the one extra who actually managed to worm his way in.

"_Seven…_"

"_Six…!_"

The numbers ended now going _up_! Like a question going _up_! Floating with excitement!

"_Five…!_"

"Four…!"

And then they got so loud, you couldn't tell who was shouting or if anyone _wasn't_, and Sora was bouncing a little on the tips of his toes and Riku's detached mind, floating not with excitement but with a self-furious indifference, wondered if it was bittersweet for his boyfriend who wanted to be shouting in French, far, far away.

"Three…!"

"Two!"

"_One_!"

God, no, please no, I don't think I'm ready.

_"ZERO!"_

They were so _loud_, Jesus, they shouted so _much_ it was like being surrounded by an angry punctuated wind that didn't leave, but Sora's skin was pink and his eyes were blue, and his hair was shiny and rough and caught in Riku's eyes in confused flashes because he pulled Riku's head down and _kissed_ him right on the _mouth_.

franticallylovinglybravinglyhappilySoraly.

Kairi? Was there? Riku blinked and she was, anyways, laughing with them and yanking off her plastic sunglasses and tossing them into the air with the hats and the scarves. Everyone was shouting and laughing and Kairi pointed at them and put her shaking hand on Riku's shoulder, "God, Sora, I can't believe you just d- haha! Did that!" And laughed even harder.

"Dude! _Dude_! Sora!" Some big, disconnected part of Riku, calm like an undisturbed puddle on a farm road, found it a little annoying that this late in the game Sora still had about a million friends Riku'd never heard of. Like the one, coming, just that _guy_ he saw in the hallways sometimes and thought that maybe he shouldn't wear that baseball sweatshirt so much, because wearing the same thing every day was pretty – pretty – it was like what Arthur the Aardvark did.

And then maybe you were never gonna have to see same-sweatshirt-Sam ever again for your whole life, or if you did, you wouldn't recognize him. Because high school was over forever and same-sweatshirt-Sam (what was his name?) was laughing with Sora. "Haha! Dude, what the _fuck_? Did you just kiss a _guy_? Ha! _Je_sus, Sora!"

Sora laughed with him, elbowing Riku in the stomach. Riku's conscious mind clicked back into place angrily: _boys are not supposed to kiss other boys **boys are not supposed to kiss other boys **Sora just kissed you he **kissed** you in front of **everybody in your whole fucking world** after all the paranoia and the fright and the why would he **do** that when you could have gone your whole time here without being asked questions or looked at funny **and now it's gone** you're gonna be that kid who kissed a boy at graduation—_

Sora laughed and fake-punched same-sweatshirt-someone in the shoulder, and he said, "Hell yeah I did! You jealous?"

Laughlaughlaugh. "Seriously, what the hell?" Laughlaugh. Laughter was like an unspoken hands in the air. Nonthreatening.

Casting his eyes to Riku, Sora shrugged, and he grinned wide. "I'unno, makes it easier to remember the day. Maybe _you_ should kiss a _tree_."

Kiss a tree. Like Riku fucking Tepes was a ten-meter-tall tree. Goddamit, Sora, every time.

* * *

Kairi lost a flip-flop climbing over the rocks at the point-of-the-island beach. The one that Riku came to when it was raining, the one that was too many rocks to be pretty, right smack in the middle of the line that divided the dry bit from the wet bit. You could stand on that line, if you wanted.

It slipped between two big boulders, because she hadn't been paying enough attention. It bothered Riku that somewhere in all his ugly gray nature was a brink pink plastic flip-flop.

And damn if it wasn't sunny as all Hell, and the sky was not cloudy and dark and closed like being tucked in by a giant comforter, but it was open and big and scary.

"Hey! Guys, wait up!"

"Aw, Kairi! Just walk! You aren't even on the pointy rocks yet! Everything over there is flat and dry."

"'S not _my_ fault you wanted to come here right after school," she hollered back at them, crouched and reaching towards the next big pink-grey boulder. "I'm still wearing a skirt!" Her hair looked an even lighter red in the sunlight, which washed angrily over the rocks like it'd been forced awake that morning. If you looked close enough, you could see where her hair turned darker at the roots. Where it was growing back normal.

Riku was sitting on his rock, which was now light grey, covered in tiny white salt crystals and barnacles which dug into his thighs like pebbles in a shoe. Because it wasn't raining, now, not anywhere on the whole island. A seagull made a long hollow seagull noise. The ocean made an ocean noise.

He swung his legs and kicked his feet against the boulder, stretched his head around like a stiff owl to see Sora a couple of leaps away and Kairi further, still trying to hop, with one flipflop in her hand and the other lost to the crabs and the tiny little bug things stuck in water bottles.

"Hey," Sora said when he was one rock away, and touching distance. With his hands in his short pockets and his big stupid yellow shoes scraped with mud.

"Hey," Riku said.

There wasn't anything to say, really, except for the being confused thing. The thing about kissing you in front of everybody and making Riku freak out about it and then making it into a joke. Even though he was supposed to be the brave one. It was okay for a few minutes at a time, and then he'd look at Sora, and think about it, and it would start to bother him just that tiny little bit.

There was a thing that fixed this last time, he _knew_ it. What was it?

_Communication_, his mind replied sarcastically.

"Sora?" Kairi was still far enough away.

"Yeah?" When Sora smiled down at you the angry sun got stuck in his spiky hair, trapped in between all the brown. And his eyes were sort of…they were different. Only they were still really, really blue.

"Why'd you…when that guy asked, you acted like the whole kissing thing was a joke, didn't you?" he said it uncomfortable. Like it was a barnacle digging into your thigh.

"Yeah…" Sora looked a little upset, like he'd been scared of it happening. "I kind of figured…I mean, you were looking at me so weird, I figured you were angry I'd done that, so I thought you wanted me to act like it was just a joke." He pursed his lips and he rubbed the back of his head with his hand.

"Oh!" Knowing he sounded a little too excited, he edited himself. "Oh," he said again. "I thought…I dunno. Sorry. You don't…have to do that, you know."

"But you looked so –" (Oh, Sora the fucking hero, right? How could he have forgotten.)

"I know, sorry, I just…" Riku breathed out, _hoo_, to get rid of the tight hotness in his chest, and smiled. "I just need to start getting used to it, you know? It's a stupid thing to freak out about. So just…let me be freaked out at first. Okay?"

So Sora the wonderkid smiled again. And Riku liked to think he smiled the same way now as he did before his parents died. "Yeah," he said, "Okay. I'm glad you…know that it's a stupid thing to freak out about. I mean," and it was here that he paused, glanced up at Kairi and laughed because she was stuck between two very slippery, seaweed-covered rocks, and he jumped over onto Riku's rock to stand next to him and look at the exact same things. "I'm really very confused. I've noticed this sort of, this kind of paradox thing."

Leaning back on his hands, Riku asked standing-Sora, touching-distance, "What?"

"Everyone…okay, not _everyone_, but a lot of people say that…you go through life alone, right? Ultimately…you…choose how it goes. But, but they also say that no man is an island. So I guess…yeah. I'm confused."

Oh, oh! He was so glad he knew this one, he was so _glad_ he had an answer for Sora's question, that this time it was a real question with a real answer but no question mark.

"So?" he said. He sounded kind of cold, and maybe a little meaner than he meant to, and maybe nine feet three inches tall. "That's what people say. People are telling you that. So you use that to think what you think. That's all. You use you, and you use them, and you get…more you, I guess."

Swing, swing, kick, kick. His heels bounced off of the rock and back into the air. Next to him, Sora shivered, and drew his hood up over his head even though it wasn't all that cold.

"…yeah." Sora rolled his leg to the side and bumped his knee into Riku's shoulder. He laughed, looked back at Kairi and said, "I love you."

It was kind of overwhelming, because you were right in between the wet half and the dry half of the island, but at the same time, you were with your boyfriend looking out in the same direction, from the same side of the line. Even if he liked to talk about dead fucking gurus or how many suicides were in your average school day.

Riku snorted. "Yeah," he said. "Me too."

"Sora! _Jeez_! A little help, here!?" Kairi yelped and half-slid down one of the rocks, which had Riku wondering what the Hell she'd _done_ on this island when she was a little kid. What was there besides beaches? You rock-hopped when you were little. Hop-hop-hop. Like a penguin. Everyone knew that. He was just glad he was here and not on one of the sandy beaches. Here the crabs didn't run away when they saw him and the seagulls didn't expect any food.

"Come on, Kairi, it's your right of passage! Become a real woman!" Sora laughed like a hyena and looked back at her.

"Exactly! You gotta traverse the rocky time of puberty!" Riku added, leaning back on one hand to watch her.

"…you guys suck," she said eventually.

At the same time, "Yeah."

This world was colored in brown, blue, and green. There was just this tiny bit of white, and on the afternoons if you stood in the right spot, there was yellow. Theirs was cozy and it didn't move much, but there was a door made of trees and it didn't have a lock.

Sora laughed again. "Haha! I just noticed…lookit where we're sitting. We're right on the edge of the two parts of the island, right? Look, Riku!" He straddled his legs and put his fists on his hips. "I'm standing in two places at once!"

So, all Riku did was he laughed too, and yawned, and he kissed the inside of Sora's knee really fast. "You're always standing in two places at once, stupid," he said. "It just depends on where you draw the lines."

* * *

_The end._

"The scale is very small, and it is not at all clear how it works, but it makes a nice thought for a time when we can't seem to get anything straight, or do anything right."  
- **Lewis Thomas**

* * *

A/N: Fffff.

Ffffffff_ffffffffffff_.

Okay. Kay then. Okay. Yeah okay that's how I wanted to end it. Okay. Okay.

HAHA

okay.

I think one of the main perks of the fanfic format is that everyone has a chance to interact with everyone else, plus one person said that people might get kind of intimidated by me? Which is ridiculous. Have you looked on my profile? I am certifiably paranoid and introverted. I will talk to you if you want.

So if you feel like talking to me, even though I have decidedly limited knowledge when it comes to social norms, standards or um basic etiquette, you can find me on here, MSN, Gaia, deviant art, fictionpress...which is a little sad, but, hey. My brain is...ran out of...stuff. Just ask me. PM. Review. Is it presumptuous to assume anyone will care? Pfft, whatever. SOCIAL ETIQUETTE HAHA I DON'T EVEN-

-coughcoughhackhack- OH LOOK MY OTHER LUNG.

Review?


	17. Two Paradoxes are Better Than One

**They May Even Suggest a Solution.**

**

* * *

**

A/N:

Now listen, Eileen.

I could post this on Tuesday. Or even Monday. Or like, at a time when I am not exhausted, or something? BUT I'm going to forget and/or nervous myself out of that if I do, so I won't.

Anyways.

I've been way overflustered by argtfargtling because you people are taking away pieces of my soul, and uhm, like I said, I don't want to be one of those stupid jerks who sits around like "lookit how many people like me urhurhurhur" or something, but you guys should go look at this picture, because it's lovely and wonderful and I'm crazy flattered - http:// buko-koko . deviantart . com / art / Rain-Shadow - 140291296 (I'll also put a link on my profile. Tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I'm losing brain function exponentially. Wait, let's see if I can spell. B-A-N-A-N-A-N- okay I always misspell that word. I just misspelled misspell. That tells you how tired I am.)

This epilogue was supposed to be so hilarious. Like I'm not even kidding. Then I sat down and thought about it, and then when I wrote it, it turned out bipolar, but hey. _I_ kind of like it. The way you kind of like a dog with three legs or something. Or a used pencil. "It's not broken, it has _character_!"

Merry Christmas, by the way. Or, more accurately, happy third day of Channukah.

Anyways, since it's an epilogue, and not really connected to the rest of the story, it doesn't get any quotations. Unless I come back later and I feel like it.

I'mma go ahead and dedicate this to Muumuu12 and buko-koko for being awesome. Oh, and to Minikimii, who listened to me whine about it, and to whose piano playing I wrote like...the good half of this epilogue.

ENYOY.

* * *

Sora Goodwin was the sort of guy who told you what he was thinking when he was thinking it. Riku kinda liked that about him, most of the time, because it meant that he didn't have to worry if something was wrong. He would _know_ if something was wrong, he just _would_, because if you were Riku Tepes, Sora Goodwin sat you down and said "Riks, I need a hug."

Fuck but was Sora Goodwin sort of cute when he did that, huh?

It got sort of annoying if he did it too much but once in a while it was just really cute.

It was not five weeks into summer. It was also not even five weeks until they were meant to get on a plane with two one-way tickets to the same city, and not five weeks until they were meant to take taxis in opposite directions, and not five weeks until Riku was going to get really really lost in a place where it rained most of the time, probably.

And so Sora Goodwin sat down Riku Tepes on a chair and sat on his own bed, and after a few minutes of tending to themselves, he started, "Riku?"

"Yeah?"

"You love me, right?"

Sora slid over to the edge of his bed and climbed off it.

"Yeah," Riku said. He was trying to fix a keychain on his backpack; the two tight silver coils were getting separated. It made it easier for it to fall off of things. It was also kind of fun to slide it back and forth around the loop in the zipper pull.

"Okay, me too, so," Sora said, and he straddled Riku's lap and he said "I think we should have sex."

It was right about here that Riku's mind slid to a slippery pause.

Okay.

O_kay_.

Sex.

Sex was a word that meant two people and…and their…fluids. Oh, God, Riku Tepes, shut _up_. Do not use the word _fluids_, that is not an okay word for you to use right now.

So okay. There's that concept down. Sex. Good job, Riku Tepes.

Sex with Sora. Sex with Sora would entail…the things that he'd already mentioned about sex, but they would be with Sora, and with him.

See, Riku Tepes didn't really think about it that much. The whole concept in general, it didn't enter into his mind as often as it could naturally be expected to.

Sex with…_Sora_…and _him_…was not…really like the normal…kind, was it? Because it involved…him. And Sora.

…naked.

Wait.

Of all the things, Riku could only splutter, "Wh – I mean…_how_? I mean can you even…what?"

Sora laughed out loud, and rocked back and forth like a rocking horse. "Ri-_ku_! Come _on_! Of course you can."

"But…we're both _guys_, I mean…Sora…"

Sora rolled his eyes and tutted in disappointment. "That's weird," he said. "I mean, haven't you – ever gotten curious? Or googled it or anything?"

Sometimes, when Riku slept over, he noticed that Sora had the most horrible dreams in the world. They started out as not-nightmares, as far as Riku could tell. They started off as sex dreams. Sora would moan and tug at his hair; he'd move slowly and whisper things that Riku never really tried bothering to understand. But – and this was the part Riku didn't understand, how you could go from one to the other with nothing in between – it was only ever a few minutes before he scrunched up in a ball all of a sudden. He held himself to himself and folded up like a chair, and sometimes he stayed like that, like a little armadillo-boy, for however long it took Riku to fall asleep. He shrunk down into a tiny box and shook and sometimes, on the really bad days, on the really sad days, he'd cry and pinch his lips together and make gulping noises.

He'd had a bad one, just a few days ago. A really bad one.

It just made Riku wonder, was all.

"No," he told Sora. He absently traced his thumbs over his boyfriend's hips. "I never really thought about looking it up. I guess I just…" and stopped himself before he tried to come up with a real reason.

"Well," Sora pursed his lips. "I guess I kind of expected you to say that anyways, honestly. You're so disinterested in this stuff, you know that? It kinda gives a guy an attention complex."

"Huh?"

He snorted. "You're totally bored with it."

Riku Tepes kissed Sora Goodwin on the lips. He kissed Sora Goodwin some more until he kissed back kissed forward. Smiled against island boy's lips and tugged on his hair. "Not bored," he muttered. "Just not good at it."

"Yeah," Sora agreed with him, with stung in a really dull way. "I'm serious, though."

"'Bout what?" Riku grinned stupidly.

"You suck." Sora rolled off him and sat down next to Riku, picking up a dropped pen by the side of the bed and clicking it in and out. Click-a-click-a-click. "You've never even wondered? Like had dreams or anything?"

He supposed, if he were to discuss this with anyone, it would be Sora. "Well…" cough. "I don't really _remember_ –"

"Ha! That means you have!"

"So-_ra_! Shut up!" Looking guiltily at the door, Riku pulled up the zipper of his hoodie. It was a sleeveless one, of course, which sort of defeated the point if you were anywhere but the island. It was warm even when it rained here so you could have a hood and no sleeves. Thinking about it was a very nice distraction.

"Listen," Sora said. "I think we've been way better than most high school couples out there, right? I mean, come on! Over a year? We're not exactly together because of our raw animalistic attraction for each other, are we?" Riku snorted. "Don't laugh. I maintain that there has been very little groping, considering we're almost in college."

"Sora!"

"The guppies in your fish tank get more action than I do! How is that fair?"

"I don't – " he folded his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. "Come on. This isn't my…my…strong suit, okay?"

"It's just another way of – it's just, I mean," Sora laughed, lifted up his arm and rested his elbow on Riku's shoulder. "I know."

Still wrapped up in his own limbs, it was Riku, this time, who put his head in Sora's lap. He faced the game console and watched their reflection in the television. Brown and white. Boring, wasn't it? He thought so, but then he got into what was boring and what _wasn't_ boring. He was the kind of person who'd sit there and figure out why, which sucked. "You know, they taught us about this in sex ed in sophomore year, Sora." He cleared his throat. "Respected and loved romantic partner, I am glad that you are attracted to me but still respect me enough to ask permission for sexual intercourse, but I myself feel unprepared for this step in our relationship. I hope you will understand that it does not mean that I don't love you, but I will not give in to the pressure to have intercourse at this young age."

Riku's respected and loved romantic partner bopped him on the ear and cackled when Riku whined. "As if! For one thing, _you're_ just _scared_."

"I'm not _scared_, Sora." Scared of what? There wasn't anything scary about touching, not really, _actually_ scary. People did it all the time. People younger than him did all the time and it wasn't like the whole world was braver than he was or something.

"Then why not?"

"I don't – _know_! I guess I just, I just figured it wasn't really…God, seriously! Just drop it, okay?" He sat up and sighed, playing with the fringe of hair that stuck out from his ponytail holder.

"I don't get it." There was that voice again.

The sad one. The Riku, You Love Me, Right? Please Love Me Like I Love You voice. Riku wasn't all the way sure that Sora knew he had it, because sometimes it just happened, and he didn't know how to deal with it. And Sora would just pull himself out of it, anyways, eventually. He always did.

Breathing slowly, he leaned his head against the side of the bed and looked Riku full on in the face. "What the big deal is period. I always thought, that if I were going to have sex, that it was just a way of connecting to somebody. How it was sort of like…talking without words."

Before Riku could tell him otherwise, "I know what you're gonna say. I know, Riks, people do it 'cause they wanna have sex. I'm saying that we wouldn't. I'm saying that…I don't know. Maybe I just want to see what all the fuss is about, and…" He traced the tips of his fingers over Riku's own hand. "I was just thinking about connecting to people and stuff. I dunno. Maybe I'm just a horny teenage boy."

_You ever have those dreams where you're the only person in the whole world left? Or not even that, but like there's nothing left you can do but you didn't do anything you wanted to your whole life and then all of a sudden you can't? I was talking to Belle about those; she says she read somewhere that that's having a nightmare about self-control. Oh! Or it has something to do with your teeth falling out? I forgot._

Licking his lips awkwardly, Riku pulled on one of Sora's legs until his friend was forced to straddle his lap again. Sora sat up on his knees and his hips pressed forward a little. "You really want to?"

"Mm-hm." He draped his arms around Riku's neck and closed his eyes; he licked Riku's lips for him.

Riku thought about it. Sora was right; it was such a hyped-up thing. He wondered why it was like that, why it was such a big deal. It wasn't that he'd never wanted to ever, of course not, it was just that…he didn't see why it mattered so very, very much.

He thought about that dream he'd had. It had been…a nice dream, until he'd woken up; until he'd felt dirty and nasty and too grown up for his own good and too much a teenager to be a grown-up, but. But something about him liked the idea of it. He wondered if it was like an impulse buy, sex. He hadn't applied much thought to it but he thought about it now. Somehow it seemed like a new and exciting thing, like it would make him more of an adult. You think _you're_ jaded? _I've_ had sex with another man. Ha! You naïve bastard.

What a horrible thought. Having sex just so that he could have one single thing that made him not-island boy. Not isolated. Not…innocent.

He thought about Sora again.

"Okay," Riku said distractedly. "But you're gonna have to show me how, 'cause I don't know." Kissing back, he opened his mouth up and pulled away when Sora laughed.

"I didn't mean _now_!" Sora brushed his nose against Riku's, which only served to annoy him. Riku felt talked-down to.

"You didn't?"

"We can't do it _now_, silly."

"Why not?" He had felt, to some degree, like a brave and exciting person. Like the sort of high schooler (or college kid) who just had sex with his boyfriend, slightly powerful and dangerous and God, normal for once.

"'Cause…" coughing, Sora scratched the back of his neck. "Well I mean, I need to…figure it all the way out, too. I only know the…" more coughing, "Basics. And I think we need – like, we need some stuff. That I don't have."

Riku sneezed more out of surprise and lack of anything else to do than actual need. "What – uh, kind of stuff? I hadn't thought it was that…complicated."

"I don't think it's as complicated as I'm making it but I wanna be sure."

He drummed his fingers on the thick carpet of the floor and thought about the little strings of rug like they were a buzzcut. Sex in movies, and in TV shows, and in books, happened really easily and fast. Of course, they never went into much detail – Riku wasn't exactly prone to looking up porn – but it was always two people who shouted at each other for a few minutes or something, then started kissing, and then there was an uncomfortable amount of skin, and then it was the next morning and they both woke up naked next to each other.

It occurred to Riku that he was maybe missing an important part of this whole process. He knew how it worked, but he wasn't inclined to entirely believe the movies on this point.

He couldn't see waking up naked next to Sora and sneaking out of the room like they were doing something wrong. He didn't know what he could expect, but it wasn't that, really.

"You mean we have to – " shuddering at the thought – "Like, research it?"

"Just online," Sora shrugged. "I don't really want to take any chances."

Momentarily silent, and stunned by what felt like a lifetime-relevant decision made in the space of one afternoon, Riku blinked and decided, "We'll need condoms."

* * *

It took them about a million years to actually really get up the courage to do anything about the decision that day. It took them about a million days sitting on top of Sora's big white roof and staring at the cloudless sky until there were funny not-black spots swimming in your eyes like water bugs.

Riku had noticed the creepiest pattern ever. Maybe.

It was just that, every night Sora had a nightmare, he was really horny the next day. Sort of. At the very least, he liked being near people more than usual.

Day A Million, on the roof, Riku asked him, "Sora?"

"Yeah?" It was crazy hot but Sora was curled up with his nose in his boyfriend's side.

"What do you nightmare about?" Nightmare like it was a verb. The way you could lie but you couldn't truth.

Sora was quiet for a long time.

"Stuff. Stupid things, I guess."

"What happens? Are you running away from monsters or something?" Most of Riku's dreams were about cursed things and him protecting a castle, which was weird, and then the castle usually fell apart. That wasn't true. It was just he'd had that dream twice and he remembered it.

"No," he said simply. "I'm stuck somewhere. Or getting crushed by something. Or drowning. Or I'm tied to the ceiling and my teeth are falling out. One time Kairi was sitting on the bed making fun of me but I don't remember why." He sighed. "And then sometimes there's that stupid fire thing."

"And then? Then what happens?"

Sora drummed the tips of his fingers against Riku's stomach. He felt the shrug.

And said, "Sometimes you wake up."

* * *

There was something absolutely and disgustingly hilarious about the fact that Riku only knew where to buy condoms because of sex ed in freshman year. They made you go to a store and write down information about size and lubrication and brand and latex versus sheep skin and _fuck_ was it awkward because there were like, two stores that had those things within walking distance, so pretty much no matter what time you went you ran into another freshman standing there staring at the condoms with a piece of notebook paper and a pencil.

Oh how far he had come. Standing in the condom isle of an industrial-sized CVS. Still staring at condoms.

Only he was with his _boyfriend_ now!

Gee, that made it _so _much better.

Sora coughed sourly and stared at the bright orange price tags, big numbers and little numbers and zipcodes on the stickers on the shelf, showing you how much lower their unit price was and all that. On the metal shelves with the boxes of condoms just _sitting _there awkwardly _waiting_.

"Do we really _need_ them?" he whispered. Like Sora was afraid of getting caught. "I mean, I'm pretty sure we can't transmit diseases to each other, considering." He giggled. "And I don't think that you'll get pregnant."

"Yeah, I know," Riku shoved his hands into his pockets. "It just feels like an obligation. Like part of the whole…shebang."

"The whole what?"

"Uh." His face felt hotter. "The whole, like, event. Thing. Occasion."

Sora made a _pfft_ noise through his teeth and giggled. Picking up one of the more brightly-colored boxes, he flipped it around like he was looking for nutrition facts. "Hey, we should get apple-flavored condoms!"

"What? Why? What's the point of that?" Riku's voice was just about painfully sincere. He wondered how they flavored latex. Did they cover it with something?

"Are you serious?"

"What? Uh, whatever," desperately trying to save face; after all, he wasn't very keen on being shown up by Sora in this, too. "I don't really care."

"We could get kiwi!"

"Sora. Seriously. Not my main priority."

He looked guiltily down the side of the isle, at the cosmetics, waiting, just waiting for someone to come down here. A couple of jokesters or jocks or teenagers or, heaven forbid, grown adults. Someone to come down and look at them funny. _Normal_ boys didn't buy _condoms_ together, that was _fucking_ weird. Now that he thought about it, did couples ever buy condoms together? It seemed more normal for one of them to go get the stuff and bring it back. His stomach lurched when he actually thought about going up to the register to buy them. Yeah, we're just here, two teenage boys, to buy some condoms and lube. It's a totally socially normal bonding experience for people our age.

He imagined the looks they'd get and the head-shaking. He imagined Sora, _Sometimes you wake up_, and how he always felt after his own nightmares.

Okay. Okay. So look at it this way, Riku Tepes. Three years from now you won't remember jack shit about the clerk of the CVS or buying lube, but you'll remember making your person feel better. He would remember taking away the scary part of the nightmare for Sora.

He stole himself and breathed quietly. All was well, et cetera.

"Um," he whispered, though, "What…_kind_ of lubrication?"

"I don't…uh…the…normal kind?"

"Which one is the normal kind?"

Riku stared helplessly at the shelf, and at the gels, and the pink bottles, and the tubes with pictures of women's midriffs on them. This one heated on contact and this one provided the smoothest experience with your partner and this one set the mood like no other and this one had new shape, same great texture.

Fucking really?

That was creepy.

"God, never mind," he hissed, "Let's just get the black one."

"What, the astro-one?"

"Sure. It looks normal." He picked it up between his first two fingers, and he let it dangle there awkwardly like it would infect him. "Uh." He gripped it more firmly and looked at Sora with guilt. This was the part where one of them offered to go pay for the stuff himself to let the other free of the painful embarrassment.

Haha. Oh Riku Tepes. Are you sure you should be having sex if you're still this naïve at eighteen?

"Is that all we need?"

"Websites didn't really mention anything else," Sora coughed. "In terms of, of um, necessity."

Websites. Jesus. There were _websites_ that gave instructions about _gay sex_.

"Okay," Riku took a deep breath. He found it hard to keep it inside of him. Inside he felt all hot and constricted and the coolness of the breath was a river running through lava. He thought about two teenage boys going up to the counter and putting their condoms and their lube up for the clerk to see, both together, standing a little too close, paying for it. He wondered what the clerk would think of them again. If he – or she – would think that gay sex was wrong, or that they were too young to be doing this on their own, or that this was totally normal. Or wouldn't think of it again ever because…

Because whatever.

Okay. Because whatever. Great. Fantastic in theory.

He ignored the deceivingly light guitar music crackling over the loudspeakers (it was tourist season, after all, and they had to cater to the island stereotype), hyperconsciously gripping the bottle of lube, Sora following happily behind him with his box of condoms.

So much had he built up the experience in his mind that the actual happening was brief and unmemorable. The cashier rang them up stoically and, just as stoically, gave them a bag for their things (which Sora declined).

Riku felt like a real goddamn grownup when he left the store, even if they still had to walk back.

* * *

The thing was that it was moving as fast as it wasn't.

Because two weeks ago Sora sat on his lap and said "I want to have sex with you" and now there they were, in his room on a lucky weekend that Belle had to work on the mainland, sitting on the bed with an unopened bottle of lube and an unopened box of condoms. Fully clothed and staring at the things between them.

They had pulled the curtains over the windows and locked the door; they'd cleaned up Sora's room, as futile as that felt, made the bed.

"Riku," Sora picked up the box of condoms. "Uh. Before we start I want you to promise me something – "

"Yeah?"

His hair tickling his nose (his hair had gotten longer, in the last few months, but it was still brown and pointy and…just,) Sora laughed and broke the plastic seal on the cardboard box. "No getting embarrassed, okay, Riks?"

Riku frowned. "Huh?"

"I mean, this probably isn't how it usually happens with teenagers – it's probably a spur of the moment thing, really – and I appreciate that you're doing this because I want to – not that I don't think you're ready – but we're planning it, we're sitting here planning to have sex, which is bound to be awkward, right? It would normally happen when people are already all hot and bothered. So no getting embarrassed, either of us. I've seen you naked, and you've seen me naked at least twice, so don't just hold back from doing something because you think it'll be embarrassing. 'Cause no matter what we're not gonna be weird about this after."

He'd gotten quieter and quieter as he had gone on, flipping a single wrapped condom between his fingers.

"Pessimist."

"Promise?"

"That you're a pessimist?"

Sora pursed his lips and chucked the condom at Riku's face; it hit his nose and fell into his lap. "You know what I mean."

Now Riku was the one to pick it up. The wrapping was thick and serrated on the edges, and he could see where Sora had torn it off unevenly from the strand of them; he could see the perforated beginning line on the side and the "tear here" arrow. It all seemed so bizarrely normal, like opening a bag of chips. Opening a packet of grown-up.

"I promise," he relented quietly. "Embrace the awkwardness and all that."

"I'm not forcing you or anything? You – you want to too, right?"

"Yeah. And you definitely know how to do it? In theory?"

Sora ran a hand through his hair and laughed. "Yeah. But let me just – double check something really fast?" He stood up, and the bed creaked tellingly when he did; he trotted over to his laptop.

Riku was a happy guy. If…if this was ever gonna happen, he would want it to be this way. Planned and double-checked, at night, with the blinds drawn and the door closed and the lamp turned on medium-brightness. A tiny little world for his tiny little understanding of it, inching outwards.

"Hey, did you check email on my computer?"

"Uh, yeah? Why?

"Nothing, nothing. It's just sending me one of those little bottom-right-corner pop-ups telling me you have new mail or something…"

"Oh?" There was a rational part of Riku's mind that had been previously nonexistent, now blown out of proportion to his life; if girls at silly parties could get drunk and almost die and end up being your best friend, emails could be really important somehow. It was just that if he didn't check it – he'd wonder. Even if Does Not Happen. "Can I just read it really quick? Out of curiosity –?"

Sora was quiet for a moment, not really noticeably, and "Yeah, sure." Like he knew already.

It was from the parent-teacher organization, the same one that had sent out the email telling the students to be nice or else, because Sora was a French orphan and damn, if you're a French orphan you're kind of already fucked.

The email…was not about French orphans. It was in the same color as the rest of the emails, in a cute little silver and blue box with the school symbol in one corner.

_Dear Students and Parents of Destiny Island District High Schools,_ it began, and Riku realized it had been meant for the other school too,

_As some of you may have already heard, recently, our community has been dealt a great loss. On Tuesday, July 14th, Allison Lang Wu, a 2010 graduate of __West__Destiny__Island__High School__, passed away in the __Destiny General__Hospital__. She had been hospitalized a week prior due to injuries suffered in a car accident, and her passing was very peaceful. We would like the members of our school community to be aware of this tragedy – Ms. Wu was a valued student at __West__Destiny__Island__High School__, and she will be missed. _

_Her family will be holding a memorial service on the third of August in the Seashole Auditorium in __West__Destiny__Island__High School__ from __8 p.m.__ to __10 p.m.__ Any and all are welcome to attend._

_Sincerely,_

_Destiny __Island__ High School District PTO_

Riku felt funny in his stomach and all heart-squeezy, like there was something hot and tight sitting inside of his lungs.

"Hey? All done?"

But – …

"Fuck," he grumbled, slumping back in Sora's chair in front of Sora's computer, Sora the French orphan, Sora who lost everyone he had and had to start over in the middle of somewhere.

But – but Does Not Happen.

Sora came up behind him, his breathing just vaguely labored, and leaned over Riku's shoulder to read the email himself. And after a few seconds, he just put his hand on Riku's shoulder and rubbed it back and forth, like Riku'd seen Belle do for her foster son a few times. "I'm sorry," Sora said. Bumping his chin against the crown of Riku's head, he continued, "Did you know her?"

And Riku sighed a long sigh and let Sora tug his hand – and the rest of him - over the bed to sit down.

"I think so," he confessed, leaning up against the headboard and watching the closed window. From this angle, parallax just allowed him to see a corner of the ocean sparkling. Parallelograms of light, headlights of the car going by outside, moved across the wall. "I'm pretty sure I talked to her a couple of times last year and sophomore year. She was in some of my classes, probably. Just – no, not really. I didn't."

"I'm sorry," Sora said again, even though he was smiling. It wasn't a very strong smile, Riku supposed. Sora sat on the bed next to him and touched his hand.

His voice cracking, Riku muttered, "Yeah," and felt stupid. And this time it was him who said "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

His eyes felt hot, like something in the pit of his stomach was trying to chase the water out of them. He preemptively wiped his face with the corner of his palm. There was a bubble in his throat made of Styrofoam.

"It's dumb," he explained to his best friend, who inched closer and pulled his knees up to his chest. "I didn't even know her and I basically never talked to her. But I'm – " he gulped the bubble down (it popped up again), "You know? It's not even gonna affect me. Not even the tiniest little bit. But I still - …"

"No," Sora leaned against him and looked him in the eyes. "It's never ever stupid to cry about somebody who died if you knew them when they were alive. _Jamais_, Riks."

"I didn't _know_ her!" He could barely even recall a face for the name, so unimportant was this girl to his tiny world. He just felt like being converse.

For lack of anything else to do, he fingered the opened box of condoms; he distracted himself with the crack along the opening of the cardboard.

And there was Sora's hand again, on his knee, making things worse, somehow.

"You met her," Sora said. "I mean, this was a person who you knew was alive, and now she's not. That's scary, Riku. That's – trust me. It's really fucking scary."

Riku didn't say the obvious thing. He didn't say 'it's different, your parents died.' He didn't say that a girl whose name you only barely remembered was not the same as your parents. He wondered if Sora already knew what he meant.

"You've never lost anyone before, right?" Sora asked him. "Not anybody human?"

"No," Riku said. Not even a grandparent. That happened to kids in movies, don't be silly, it didn't happen here. It was like car-chases and bank robberies and AIDS, it didn't happen here, it couldn't.

"Anybody would be upset," his boyfriend ran his hand over Riku's cheek and through his hair. "Anybody would be scared, if you've got nothing to compare it too. Finally having to – figure out that people can go places where they won't ever come back."

"It's not fair – Sora, this _barely_ counts as someone I know dying! If it was a friend or something, yeah, but – I mean, come on - !"

"You keep saying that," Sora laughed and leaned forward; he nudged his head under Riku's chin. "Like you can stop being sad by trying." He turned his head forward and kissed Riku's Adam's apple. "Or like it's actually supposed to be fair or something."

Hard as Riku tried, he couldn't remember anything about Allison Wang Lu besides that she was Chinese and that she was dead. That was funny – that the most defining feature of Allison Wang Lu was her death. In life she had meant nothing; her life itself, to him meant nothing; it was her death that would leave a mark. It didn't seem like what Sora was saying.

Fucking coincidences, huh?

"Are you going to say something stupid about life and death now?" he asked Sora, who was kissing his neck. He brought his hands up and over Sora's back, wondered at the fine muscle he felt there, warm and firm and covered by the cloth of a cotton shirt.

Sora ran his nose up the side of Riku's neck, across his cheek, until their eyes met. "Life is stupid and death is stupid," he said, and kissed Riku's lips. "Oh well."

Riku was almost braindead; he stared, just sat there and he stared at Sora with his eyes-the-color-the-sky-will-be, and his Does Happen. A person you knew alive is dead now; he knows what this is like. God, it was just, it was different in real life, wasn't it?

Two eyes, the same color, Crayola Light Blue, with speckles of darker colors and pupils the same color as his. A round face with flushed cheeks and a high forehead hidden underneath a mess of brown hair. A nose slightly rounded off at the end. A happy Sora almost-smile.

"Riku?"

"I'm sorry," Riku apologized for something he didn't understand. I'm sorry for not getting it at first; I'm sorry for almost getting it now; I'm sorry about the sex thing; I'm sorry I just cried over a girl I don't really know; I'm sorry I cried more over the idea than the actual loss; I'm sorry I just did that and now I want to kiss you so much it almost hurts my chest.

"You're funny." Sora touched their mouths again, moved forward a little and lapped at Riku's mouth. There was a sharp inhalation through someone's nose and they kissed harder, but only a little. He pulled away. "Sometimes you make me feel like some wise old man the way you listen to me talk about dead people."

"I don't – " Riku didn't know how to reply to that; he just laughed nervously.

Sora just twisted his mouth funny and played his fingers over Riku's collarbone. "And then sometimes you look at me like you can't believe I seriously said what I said 'cause it's just that stupid, you know?"

Riku was…scared. Was the way to put it. The conversation was what kept him going; it was calm and it followed carved routes of their previous words; it ran down familiar pathways. He knew how to reply and where in a way that was only there on a relative scale. But the other part, the leaning, the hard kissing in between words and this closeness – it was not, quite, that he had experienced none of it before, but there was something different about it now. He felt like he was sitting on an edge made of glass and it was slowly splitting him in two.

"Yeah," he said. "It's just the – stuff you say sometimes. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it." The tight-fuzzy in his chest was fading, or moving lower, but the words Does Happen brought it back.

You don't even feel sad that she's dead. You feel relieved because -

You have a claim to pain, Riku Tepes. Good for you. Oh, it's okay, you know what it's _like_. Fuck you.

Laughing again, Sora wound his arms around his boyfriend's neck. "I don't know what anyone's supposed to do with it," he whispered. He set his lips against Riku's and started saying something else, something about moving, and about learning, but Riku didn't pay attention.

He closed his eyes and felt Sora. Warm lips, dry, a little rough from nervous biting, touched his and tingled. Sora's breath was hot and it drifted into his mouth and mixed with his own, that smell like rainy vegetables in fall, dirty and clean, toothpaste-flavored air and teeth which they'd learned not to click together so much. Little vibrations from Sora's words drifted in a direct current to a growing tight-hot-squeezy feeling growing in Riku's stomach.

Kids their age died. So did kids of every other age. One size fits all. Okay.

One of them had turned on the whole-room light, instead of just the lamp. It lit up everything everywhere. Riku didn't know what he'd expected, not roses and stupid music and candles or something, but the dimmed lights would have been kind of nice – less embarrassing? He felt so exposed.

Fuck. So people really died? Not just the parents of French orphans?

The girl with the long black hair down to her waist who had a permanently sniffling nose and her house key on a string around her neck, who once cried in sophomore French III because she'd done badly on a test? She was never going to grow up or go to a college or anything? Stuck inside a box?

And that was all he knew about her and would ever know.

"You don't get over it," Sora was saying (brokenrecordbrokenrecord you've _said_ this before), rubbing his thumbs along Riku's cheekbones, and God, his hands were so hot. "You get used to it. Riku?"

He'd been saying something probably important, or, or maybe he was just being Sora, and he was trying to make himself better by telling people all about himself. It was just – the dumbest coincidence ever; Riku hated coincidences.

He kissed Sora on the lips. Hard. Damn, well, if it was the day for growing up. He pushed his mouth forward and pulled Sora in, and without stopping Sora climbed on top of him, heavy and solid and warm like a person ought to be.

They parted for a shuddering breath and kept kissing, and then kept kissing when Sora snuck his hands just up Riku's shirt and no further, warming cold fingers on a hot stomach. He trailed lines of goose bumps over Riku's abdomen. It tickled in a way that didn't make him want to laugh.

It was like a sugar rush or a caffeine rush; somewhere in there, they crossed a line; somewhere in there, there wasn't any coming back. It started so slow and sad and comforting, and _See, Riku, I'm still here_, and then developed an energy that jittered and jangled up their insides. Like he couldn't stop or he'd explode. It was like his hand had almost fallen asleep and now he had to shake the fatigue out of it. He had to he had to he _had _to.

Had to raise his arms up above his head and let Sora slip off his shirt; after all, Sora initiated the action, he must have wanted it. Had to let him settle between his legs with his arms on either side of Riku's head, kissing him and pressing down urgently, even though the lights were all on. The jittering energy – nervousness? Denial? Fear? Or was it something so stupid it didn't have a name yet – had him unabashed, slipping his hands under Sora's shirt, too, feeling the soft boy-muscle padded by a thin layer of fat. _What if I'm bad at this? What if he hates me?_

So he did the natural thing and let Sora take over, as he was bound to do eventually, because even when he _got_ it he – didn't, really – not the way it really felt to have a person in your life not be there any more – it was like he'd lost half a person.

And then Sora laughed and sat up between Riku's legs, pulled off his shirt and leaned down to kiss Riku again, and kiss him more and faster and softer and hotter and more urgently, moving his mouth, and maybe shaking a little. And the sadness was gone, somewhat, and it just seemed – ha! It seemed funny, and weird. He ignored the death and focused on the sex that was so obviously happening, and felt like they should have had a soundtrack instead of the fast breaths and rustling cloth and bed and the wet noises of kissing. He didn't lose awareness or go mad with passion or anything. But _fuck_.

It just seemed so awkward and boyish and clumsy, how they went about it, how Sora had some serious difficulty tearing the condom wrapper and then laughed and palmed his forehead, handing it to Riku to open. They started to talk each other through it when they were down to their boxers.

"Remember, right? No getting embarrassed! And I mean, Riks, if it helps at all you're – " a long kiss – "Totally hot, okay? _You've_ got nothing to be embarrassed of, and I'm shameless, so – "

"Sora, stop talking and just _do _it!" Riku laughed and clamped his knees around Sora's hips. Don't let me process it.

* * *

He started giggling halfway through out of nervousness. He glanced anxiously at the door and giggled. It was that funny feeling in his stomach (so many of those, so many, he should make a chart to keep track) that made him do it, trapped down there inside him. So he giggled it upwards in a bubbling stream of laughter.

"Ri-_ku_!"

_Tu m'aimes, __Ri_-

"Ow! Are you sure we're doing this right?"

Sora looked up at him and grinned, then donked his head on Riku's chest. "The description made it sound easy!"

"Oh, great. And does playing the cello look easy when Yo-Yo Ma does it?"

"Just bear with it. I think it's supposed to hurt at first…" Sora kissed him in the lips (they both bubbled giggling into each other's mouths) and kept going.

XXX

A few minutes later,

"OW OW OW _OW_! Dammit! Okay, no, we are doing this _wrong_! Fuck! Stop it! This kills! _OW!_"

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry- "

"_Now!_"

* * *

It was, relatively speaking, an absolute and miserable failure in terms of losing your virginity. They would get it right about two weeks later, when they dared to try again and Sora had done a bit more background research. They would get it _very_ right about two months later.

But that was okay.

Sora crawled up onto the roof after Riku, and they both sat down (tenderly) on the edge of it, big and white and practically glowing in the night. It wasn't a particularly romantic view, and frankly, Riku was a little bit scared shitless that he'd fall off or something.

And really all you could see was some of the houses here, and the dry, cracked sidewalks along the dry brown roads, and that almost all of the lights in all of the houses were out. But some of the motion-sensor lights on driveways flickered on for a few minutes when late-night drivers went by, and the few sad community planning trees along the roads blew together.

The nighttime felt safer somehow. Because it was dark, and small. If you stood on Sora's roof on your tiptoes and saw the ocean in one direction, you could probably turn around and see it in the other direction, too. That small. Holding your thumb and forefinger a few centimeters apart small.

On one of these roads, a girl had been in a car accident and died. It seemed dislocated when he thought of it like that. He just didn't think anything about the island.

"Boo," Sora nudged him in the shoulder. "Watcha thinking?"

Riku blinked. "We're not very good at sex," he said blandly. "We kind of failed."

Sora shrugged. "We'll figure it out," he replied. "I'm pretty sure even straight couples have miserable first times, anyways. The key is _perseverance_, Riks!"

"Hah!"

Nah, thought Riku, _I think we'll be okay when we go to college. We're gonna be fine._ Did that make him like Sora?

Oh, honestly, Riku Tepes, you just had sex for the first time. Stop thinking for a second and enjoy the fact that the stars are all the way out.

"I feel like a Radiohead song should be playing or something," Riku said, kicking his bare feet against the side of the building.

"Who?"

"Radiohead."

"Who's that?"

Riku laughed and kissed Sora on the top of the head. "_Il n'a pas d'importance_," he said, with an atrocious accent.

Snorting, Sora butted his head against Riku's chin. "'Eet's not ehmportahnt!'" he said with a terrible French accent, sneering. He laughed.

"Or maybe one of those stupid acoustic guitar tracks," Riku leaned his shoulder into Sora's and spoke softly. "Something like that."

"Maybe," Sora agreed. "I kind of like it quiet, though. It's…it's nice." He sighed and pulled away, slumping over with his elbows resting on his knees and his arms dangling between his legs. Riku scooted a few inches away and leaned back to stare straight up, at the sparkling blanket covering his tiny, quiet world. It would get so much bigger soon. But right now it…yeah.

"Yeah," Riku said.

And the world was ten meters, forty-three centimeters, and three millimeters tall.

* * *

A/N: I just - okay. OKAY.

So, yes there will be a real epilogue.

Ignore this.


	18. All Thoughts Have Been Thought

**But to Make Them Truly Ours, We Must Think Them Again Honestly.**

**

* * *

  
**

A/N: You should worship me. Why? Because I took a math test this morning, I had an 8-hour rehearsal on Friday, a 6-hour rehearsal on Saturday followed by a concert, I have to write a speech on our failure to understand the full potential of meaningful literature, I have another concert on Wednesday followed by a science team meet Thursday, I have to do four quantum chemistry worksheets and two equally difficult problem sets, memorize forty French vocab terms about friendship, and know every single thing about the ocean by February, but _I still wrote this freaking epilogue_.

Dang. Well, if you have any questions, ask. I know this last part is more obvious than the others but I a little bit just wanted to drive it home. (Guess how many word this chapter has. Guess. OVER NI- look at what English class has done to me.)

Anyways.

* * *

"But it is illusion to think there is anything fragile about the life of the earth; surely this is the toughest membrane imaginable in the universe, opaque to probability, impermeable to death. We are the delicate part, transient and vulnerable as cilia."  
**- Lewis Thomas**, _The Lives of a Cell_

* * *

It was tall, and if you stood outside across the street and squinted one eye, you could see how it tilted to one side. It had three floors if you counted the top one, which was just two modified storage rooms with lead paint on the floors. The stairs were bare wood, blackened with age and bowed in the middle; the floors too, mostly.

It was coming apart at the seams. The first floor had a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, what passed for a dining room, and a closet at the base of the stairs. The second floor was three bedrooms, a bathroom and a home office (which was three half-empty bookshelves, a desk, and two laptops stacked on top of each other – because he insisted).

It smelled funny everywhere, and there were two fireplaces they were both too scared to use. It wasn't dusty, exactly. But it smelled like a forest without evergreen trees, humanized; you could tell all this wood had been outside. Sometimes you ran into something that was elaborately carved and stuck out like a sore thumb; the intricate pillar at the top of the stairs, the bedposts of the only remaining bedframe.

The fridge was old and inefficient, yellowing with age. The cabinets were mismatched. They bought a couch.

He had tried sliding down the banister of the stairs the first day and sprained his ankle. Stupid kid that he was.

Didn't seem like they were old enough to own a house. Their own house.

It was old and smelled like deadwood, and it was coming apart at the seams, and needed about a million repairs if it was going to last more than five years, and wasn't – anywhere, really, which was why it was so cheap. It was a three-minute walk from downtown where the big chain grocery store was and it was an hour-long commute, with walking and waiting and train time, from where either of them had to go every day.

It creaked when they walked up the stairs, or stumbled; the creaks creaked.

Riku sat at the kitchen table and tried very hard to wonder at the whole concept of the universe and all, but found he was really just very tired. He rested his head on his textbook; it was cool, and smooth, and paperplastic against his cheek. His hair splayed out around his head and hung over the side of the book. He surveyed the tiny cracks and ridges of wood in the table thoughtlessly, trying not to think about Prozac for dogs or whatever he had to read about next.

The inside of his sweatshirt was still warm and fuzzy, and fresh, and smelled like the store Sora had gotten it from.

He was a vet's assistant. He was going to vet school and everything but mostly, he liked being the assistant. He had to wear teal scrubs, which sucked, but he didn't have to talk to the people much (that was what the receptionist was for) or give anyone any bad news. He prepped things, and he liked the idea. Of having your job be preparation. Of having your job be petting the dog and making sure it stands still while the real veterinarian checked teeth and poked things.

He didn't like the part where they put pets to sleep, though. That always made him unhappy because he had to come in first, alone, and hook a threadbare leash to a metal pole and get the dog up onto the operating table, and get him or it to lie down. He had to sit there and pet it, and lie and say things like 'there, there, you'll be fine, it's okay' and he hated it when they weren't even old or sad. Sometimes they just couldn't anymore. Live, that is. Cancer or swallowed too many of the wrong thing or food poisoning and he didn't care if it was the "humane thing to do". It was the worst part of his job.

If he could muster the words he would tell the dogs the truth. "They're going to kill you," he'd say. "I know you were planning on doing it by yourself, but they don't want you to be alone when it happens." He'd dig his hands into the mane of fur around their necks if they were large enough and scrub their necks with his fingers. "It's okay, though. I knew this moth once that got crushed by a chair even though it was just trying to sleep. I think it's better this way, don't you?"

But usually, with a sick sad little turning in his stomach, he'd leave the room when the family came in.

It wasn't the death that scared him. It was the never-ever-never part. Of something going into that room and never coming back out of its own volition. Somehow it felt wrong to have that room be the place of so many final moments.

Final-final-final. If everything's always changing, how can nothing ever go away? If everything's always changing, why do people stay so dead?

"Ugh," he said with some finality, and banged his forehead on his textbook.

"You sound like you're having fun," Sora said, sarcastically cheerful or cheerfully sarcastic, Riku couldn't tell; he swung into the kitchen with his arm around the door frame and opened the fridge with a quiet _shlick_.

"Yes, well," he replied. "Some of us are still grad students."

"_Mm-hm_," Sora pulled out a soda and a yogurt, which Riku knew to be a pretty disgusting combination if you had them together, because the bubbles in your nose from the soda lemonlimed your vanilla yogurt. He didn't say anything. Sora thought pretzels dipped in soy sauce was good. "Oh! I think we got hired to do a car commercial today."

"How? I mean, that's just…filming."

"Naw, it's some environmental car thing, so they want like insta-blooming CG flowers and stuff like that."

"Oh," Riku sat up and tugged on his sweatshirt; he watched Sora move around the kitchen. Grab a spoon from the drawer and sit down, find the foil lip of the lid and peel it back. The glue around the edges of the yogurt container was too strong and he ripped it. "Aw…" pinching his thumb and forefinger around the remaining metal, which had yogurt on it already, he peeled it off and sucked the residue off of his fingers.

"Watcha readin'?"

"Vet stuff."

Whereas Sora worked for an animation company, doing ads, special effects, things like that, which didn't seem nearly as noble but sure didn't involve sticking a needle into a dog paralyzed with fear until it stopped breathing.

Riku, now, found it hard to breathe – not because of the euthanasia thing, of course; he'd long ago accepted that as inevitable. It was just some silly part of him that got sentimental sometimes – but the – thing was.

He hated people. Riku Tepes hated them, all of them, as a species or a group or a global phenomenon, what_ever_. They _sucked_ was the conclusion he'd come to.

Mostly because they were _everywhere_ and never acted how you wanted them to act – never, never smiled back when you were feeling brave and smiling first, never asked if you were alright even though you were moping around, always thought you were being nosy if you asked too many questions about their dogs while they waited for the 'real vet' to come into the room.

They were f- they were just _everywhere_. Ubiquitous, as his bombastic textbook would say.

When you got frustrated at something and wanted to scream, or got excited about something and wanted to scream, or got sad about something and wanted to scream, you couldn't because somebody might hear you. Somebody might hear and think you were getting mugged or beat up or raped and call the police, which would have been the sensible thing, of course.

Sometimes his heart buzzed. He had never screamed. Never.

He'd shouted, of course, but a part of him wanted to see how much louder he could get. Set his volume to max.

There was a difference between shouting and screaming so much your lungs hurt and your throat felt stripped. He imagined that was what it felt like, like after having a really good cry, tired out and trembling from quiet aftershocks.

He would not scream for fear of what the neighbors would say, and this part of him had been so unavoidably inscribed in his mind from the beginning of high school it was killing him now.

Fuck.

_Fuck._

Riku Tepes wasn't calm but he was contained. He felt funny.

He looked at his hand, outstretched on the table, and flexed his fingers out and in. Sora's hand was inches away, reached out to his, drew back.

"Hey," Sora said quietly. "Are you okay?"

"Do you ever feel like screaming really really loud, just to see how loud you can get?" He didn't say his thoughts aloud very often – for fear of what people might think, but – he did sometimes.

"What, you mean like into a pillow?"

"No."

It wouldn't go away, this feeling, this quiet tightness in his chest that wasn't excitement _or_ frustration _or_ sadness _or_ – anything, really, just energy. The part of him that bubbled up into his heart sometimes that he was sick of choking back down. It was an itch his couldn't scratch. He wanted to squeeze himself really tightly. Make the blood pump faster and hotter to dissipate it. It got worse the longer he stayed here.

Maybe it was the land. Not being able to see the ocean every time he looked out the window – he figured he'd gotten used to it. That he'd taken it for granted before, really.

"Then what do you mean?" he was almost angry with Sora for not getting it.

It dawned on him in an anticlimactic way. "Dunno," he said. "Like I want to go to the top of a mountain and just…scream really really loud. Or laugh really hard. Don't you ever feel like that?"

"Did something happen?"

"Does something need to happen for me to feel weird?" he asked morosely, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms over his stomach. Sora had toned down a lot after hitting twenty-four. He got along with everyone, and he made friends easily, and this was what: they underestimated him. But he didn't spew half-baked philosophical crap except for a very very few sometimes; what he did was ask interesting questions.

Riku's favorite thing was probably the late night discussions, in the bed or on the couch, or at the kitchen table because he'd get up for food in the middle of the night and Sora would follow him down like a neurotic puppy. They talked about everything, about the uselessness of almost all the math you learned after eighth grade, about books whose covers were too far apart, about the stickiness of scotch tape or the importance of putting your Skittles in rainbow order before eating them (red ones came last) or why it was that after a billion years of evolving to live on land whales went back to the ocean in the end.

You changed. Things changed you.

"No," Sora said. He grazed his thumb along the stretch of skin between Riku's forefinger and thumb. "Sometimes I want to scream too, but not in an angry way."

He hated Sora, sometimes, for getting him more than he got himself. It sounded romantic when he said it like that; it wasn't. He was almost sick of not being good enough and – being told he was good enough, having it enforced.

Sora picked up Riku's hand; Riku brought his other hand over and made a Sora-hand-sandwich; Sora did the same. He watched their hands, and looked up at the ceiling, which was white plaster.

"I heard this song on the radio," Sora said (he told the ceiling). "I don't remember who sang it, though. And then at one point they said 'as far as I'm concerned, there's only one way up.' Do you think that's true?"

"What?" It wasn't that he didn't understand; he was just stalling.

"That there's only one way up?"

Riku shook his head and tried to come up with a real reason for shaking his head. Besides it seems like the right answer. "There's that up," he pointed up. "But I could go to the other side of the world and up would be a different direction, wouldn't it?" He knew that was the stupid cliché answer but he said it anyways. "Or if I wasn't on Earth. If I was on the moon facing the Earth my up might be towards the Earth or to the sun or perpendicular to either of them, or if I was in space – I mean if I was in space I wouldn't have an up or a down. I could be upside-down and feel rightside-up."

Sora laughed at him (with him?) and squeezed his hands. He smiled really bright.

"What?" Riku was feeling defensive now.

"Nothing," Sora said. "Nothing. You're wonderful. I wasn't thinking of it that way at all."

"How were you thinking of it?" Sora's hands were cold at the tips; his palms were warm, and his fingers were blotchy from the winter air. He was such a real person.

Sora Goodwin shrugged and looked back down at their hands. "I thought it meant forwards," he said. "You know, like that guy says, how there are a million ways to be unhappy but only one to be happy for every person?"

"That's different, that's just entropy."

Laughing, and with his yogurt abandoned, Sora wrinkled his nose. "_L'entropie_?" he asked. "Just say chaos. Is that really the same thing?"

"Substitute happiness for…organization. It is. I was thinking about that."

"_Pagaille_," Sora said.

"What's that?" It didn't sound like chaos or entropy.

"Messy," Sora told him. "You want to scream? Like the people who yodel at the tops of mountains?"

_Clunk_. He put his chin on the table and looked up at Sora, for whom the term 'boyfriend' seemed derogatory. "I'm being weird," he muttered. "Ignore me."

He shook his head. "Me too," Riku wasn't sure if he meant the being weird or the screaming or both. "I used to feel it all the time. If it's the same thing you're talking about." When he bit his lower lip, his eyebrows creased – it always worked like this. "Sometimes it felt like I wanted something only I didn't know what. Especially in the hospital when I was all doped up on morphine. You remember? When you came to see me in the hospital?"

Riku nodded. He wondered if that's what this was, if it was wanting.

"I never knew what to call it, though, so I called it my alien emotion. I imagined a little green alien with big black eyes." He laughed. "It…would go away but…"

"It's like anticipating a sneeze and then not sneezing," Riku finished for him.

Staring absently at their round-cornered fridge, Sora smiled and looked at Riku. His bright blue eyes sparkled like they had something to prove like the ocean like somebody's mother like he didn't think about anything before he said it.

"I – " he started and stopped. "Come on." He tugged on Riku's hands until Riku stood up, and kept them together while Riku followed Sora through the door of the kitchen to the creaky narrow stairs.

"What?"

So, Riku Tepes followed Sora Goodwin up their stairs and down their hallway with the crappy carpet into their bedroom with the crappy wallpaper, where you could actually see a forest out the permanently-stuck window if you drew back the hideous flower-print yellow curtains. Their bed had a quilt, like an actual quilt with squares and everything, which smelled like the rest of the house.

Their house. Which they owned with their money from their jobs in the city they moved to.

Who followed who? He wondered sometimes. If he'd tried really hard to get a job so he could stay close to Sora who protected him from – something. Because it was probably unhealthy, being attached so strongly to just one person, but he did it anyways. He didn't trust himself to ever get this close to anybody else.

(Like having to cough but choking it down and just clearing your throat.)

(Or ignoring an itch until it went away.)

(He didn't want it to this time.)

(Screamer screamer screamer. It almost sounded poetic if you kept saying it over and over and over and over in your head and thinking about the noise.)

* * *

The next morning found Sora hiding his face in the crook of Riku's shoulder, shivering, probably, because Riku'd hogged all the blankets in the night. Sora's bare back was exposed to the barely-heated indoor winter air. Riku saw this as only fair, of course; he was still relatively unused to cold temperatures. Sora made fun of him for it, most days.

Wordlessly, Riku shuffled and tried to thrownudge the comforter back over Sora's shoulders.

"Gee, morning to you too," came his muffled voice from under the covers. It tickled Riku's skin.

"Oh. I didn't realize you were awake." He would have realized, of course, if he'd been paying attention. But that was the thing, wasn't it? It was so calm now. The tiny screaming voice in his chest was gone. Lying in their big, squished, sometimes-uncomfortable bed with the quilt and the comforter in the middle of a wooden room with two windows, one on each non-door wall, with your person next to you. Even if you had to get up and go be a vet's assistant and he had to get up and go make animated car commercials. It was enough.

It wasn't emotional roller coaster highs and lows and doing somersaults, waiting for the good days (though there were good days, and there were bad days). It was a quietness that seeped into you from all sides and said: this is enough. To worry about sealing up the windows or keeping the pipes from bursting, or what kind of present to send Kairi for her birthday, or where and when you really had to buy new boxer shorts. It suited him.

Sora poked his head out from under the covers and put it back on Riku's shoulder; Riku shivered because his feet were cold. He used to just tuck the blanket under them, he used to make a foot cocoon of blankets; this was one of the tiny crises he dealt with on a daily basis. Were Sora's feet cold? Would he be interrupting Sora's slow waking up if he tucked the blankets under their feet? He never quite resolved it in his mind.

"Hn," he said eventually, ignoring his feet and rubbing his hand up and down Sora's arm. "I feel like we're still not grown-ups." He said grown-ups, not adults.

"Why?"

"Even though we own a house. I don't know. Does that make sense?"

Sora shrugged sideways and shuffled upwards to look at Riku eye-to-eye. "Yes," he said simply. Kissed him. "Keep going."

"I…dunno. I don't _feel_ like a grown-up," he continued.

"You're not. You're still in your early twenties. Technically speaking you should be waking up right now, with a hang-over since yesterday was Friday night and you should've been out drinking, and possibly you should be waking up in some foreign girl's or guy's apartment after having a one night stand with your poor, impaired judgment!"

"We live together," Riku countered. "We own a house. We have jobs and we pay bills and everything. All we're missing is two-point-four kids and a dog."

Sora had pressed his head further into his pillow, even though their pillows were older than they were and missing any amount of plush they'd originally had. You had to stack like two and a half on top of each other in order to get it the height of a normal pillow. Oops.

"Sora?" he asked.

"Do you think the people near us think it's weird we live together?" muttering into the pillow.

And Riku laughed and patted Sora on the head, because he had absolutely no idea how to comfort people at all when they were shirtless and in your bed and not really that upset in the first place. "The world's more accepting than you think," he said. Only it almost sounded like a question.

"But what if it's not?"

"Yeah? What if it's not, Sora? What then?"

Sora breathed out through his nose and played his fingers over Riku's ribs; the tips of his hands were still cold, and the backs of them dry in the winter air. He smiled. "I guess," he said. "Maybe it's just my turn to feel weird."

"Feelings _are_ weird," Riku said, sitting up a little more.

"_You're_ weird."

"That too."

Laughing and scooching up to lean over Riku's chest, Sora pointed. "Riku," he said. "Look outside."

He did.

The window frames were all painted a sort of sickly monkey-puke green, peeling since it had been the choice of its owners in the fifties, and always, always there was winter in the tiny shivery lines of frost which traced scratches in the windows. They were all hexagonally perfect, in his mind, even the ones that were uneven and lopsided.

Snow.

(Was a bad word for it, because it sounded like it was already on the ground being stepped on. It didn't tell you anything about how it felt when it was falling and how it was like watching the air move. How it floated.)

His favorite part about snow, he had learned since he moved off of Destiny Island, was right when it first started falling and there wasn't any on the ground. He couldn't have said why.

"It's snowing," he said quietly, just to hear the words out loud. "No wonder it's so cold up here."

* * *

There were times when Riku a little bit resented working on Saturdays, if only because he was still in the college mindset that Saturdays were for Sleeping (Mondays were for Moaning, Tuesdays were for Trudging – it was all on this disgustingly cute towel Sora got him as a joke gift).

The table the animals sat on was steel; shiny and metallic and cool to the touch. The fuzzy blurred reflections of the fluorescent light bulbs above it stretched bright white and eye-hurting across the surface.

He wiped it down with a disinfectant and a very clean rag, rubbing in tiny circles – aroundandaroundandaround watching the liquid dry in streaks until he scrubbed it off. He tied his hair up in a pony tail and washed his hands in the big basin of a sink.

"Morning, Riku!" Yuna was a real vet and jeez did she fit the part.

Awful as it was of him, he kind of wanted to slap her smiling face sometimes, but mostly he liked her. She was annoyingly mommish but he liked her. The first time he'd had to help her put a dog to sleep he'd had a panic attack; he couldn't breathe through his mouth or his nose, felt like he was inhaling through his ears and his limbs were buzzing. She had sent him out of the room. She hadn't made him come back in. "Everyone reacts like that," she said. "It's normal to react like that at first."

She hadn't made him help a second time.

"Morning," he said, tossing the rag in the sink and handing her a clipboard.

"Weather's just awful, isn't it?" she asked conversationally, putting on a white coat over her clothing. "Apparently it's supposed to snow until tomorrow morning."

"Really?" He sounded like a hopeful little kid. Sora said that's what everyone did if it started snowing when you were in school. Someone, a bored someone who never paid attention and always looked out the windows, would exclaim "Hey, is it snowing?" if it had just started, or, depending on the person, "It's snowing! IT IS!" And it was then mandatory for everyone to get up from their desks and stare out the windows, or at least, that was how it had worked for Riku's boyfriend up until the end of freshman year and halfway through sophomore year.

So you had to talk about school being cancelled and everything.

How come work wasn't ever cancelled?

Well. He got to look at snow fall all day long. No sunshine.

He liked it up here.

Yuna was nodding and running her finger over her clipboard. "All day long," she said. "Frightful, isn't it?"

"Nah," Riku grinned at her. "I don't own a car, so for me it's just pretty."

"What, and you don't own a sidewalk?" she laughed and bent down to open one of the cupboards.

Riku raised his eyebrows innocently. "I have tall rubber boots and a lazy boyfriend."

He almost laughed when he said that. Tall-rubber-boots-and-a-lazy-boyfriend. That was a good way to go through life, even if it meant having a tight iron band around your chest once every very little while. Because it always went away.

"Ah," she laughed. "I guess I envy you that. Though sometimes I can convince Tidus it's manly to do all the shoveling by yourself."

Tidus was her handsome blond husband. For a pretty brunette wife. Riku had never been to their house but Yuna kept a picture of them, holding their daughter in front of their house, on her office desk. They probably had a dog and a white picket fence, or at least they had a mowed lawn and maybe a down payment on their car, and neither one of them would have silver hair until they got really really old.

Sora and Riku weren't old farts yet, but they didn't mow their lawn.

In the middle of summer it had dandelions grow all over, and clover, and chives and chamomile flowers and then these little purple flowers Riku didn't know the name of.

It seemed like Sora didn't want to be a suburbian. He didn't do what suburbia told him to do. For one thing, he didn't live in it, not really. He acted like a twelve-year-old sometimes. He went up on the roof. Twenty-four years old and he still went up on the roof.

* * *

"It's funny how dogs and cats know the inside of folks better than folks do, isn't it?"  
- **Eleanor H. Porter**

**

* * *

  
**

Yuna rested her elbows on the table and stared. The cat stared back.

"What're you gonna do with him?" Riku asked at length, fork poised over his microwave lunch.

The thing was brown, and kind of fat, with a wide scrunched up face and matted fur. The tip of its tail methodically twitched. It was lying on the steel table with its head on its legs.

"I don't know. I mean, he's clearly an indoor cat if he was hanging around Mrs. Laurins's house for that long waiting to be fed. Send him to a shelter, I suppose."

"He'll get adopted?"

"We can hope so. He – he?" Digging her fingers under the beast's stomach, she lifted it up bodily to look at its underside. "She. Probably she. Anyways, we have no idea of telling how old she is, really. Could be five, could be fifteen. Heck, she could drop dead from old age in a year." She set it down again.

"So?"

"So nothing. It's just that strays from shady origins are…just never quite as popular as the kittens, you know? And there are always kittens available."

"Yeah, that and it looks like her face got stepped on and then run over."

"Oh, come on. That's just the way the breed looks. Though I imagine she's a mix…" Yuna put her forefinger and thumb behind the cat's ears and started rubbing. The cat closed her eyes. "Aw. What a softie! Huh? Who's a softie? What a softie you are!" cooed Yuna, to the mild and understanding contempt of Riku Tepes. He went ahead and scraped around the sauce at the bottom of his microwave food and ignored the crazy cat noises.

"Huh," she said at length. "Not…a cuddler, this one." The cat had not moved from its spot, front legs crossed and squashed bulldog face condescendingly content.

"I guess that's something we have in common," Riku said, hopping off the counter. He ducked into the kitchen to put his container in the food sink and washed his hands distractedly, wiping the water on his scrubs when he came back in.

When he had first started being a vet's assistant he'd thought scrubs made him look professional and respectable. Now he was just annoyed by them because the pants were really too thin for the winter.

Yuna was thoughtfully petting the cat, just her pointer finger on the top of its head. "You don't have any pets, do you?" she said.

"I don't think we can afford a cat," Riku told her simply, checking for the next appointment. It was a good day today. No killing anything.

"What? A fully-grown one? I bet you can. Come on, I'll even do the vaccinations free, how about that? They really aren't that expensive once they're grown up. It's the kittens that you have to worry about. You always see people bringing in their kittens, don't you? For health problems or feeding them the wrong food or they fell down the stairs by accident. Once they've gotten big – especially ones like this, 'cause you can tell she can take care of herself."

Riku clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from giggling out loud. It wasn't funny, not at all. But he remembered that pubescent voice, the cracked French, _I just need a second, okay? Just…give me a second._ And the warm uncomfortable weight on his shoulder, the one that made him tense up and try to pretend this was normal, the unwanted closeness.

He shrugged. It was too storybook, anyways. Abandoned cats.

"You're a cat person, aren't you?" Yuna smiled at him brightly and rubbed a finger under her nose (it was cold season, after all). "No matter how the dogs love you, huh?"

"Uh…" He wanted to ask if they could go back to working before he started feeling antisocial again. "Dunno."

"Never had one growing up?"

Riku coughed and looked out the window, where the snow was piled up nearly six inches and made his hair look dirty and greasy. _Cal__l that white? I'll show you white. Look outside, you moron._ And laughing inwardly.

"Not really. Sora had a cat but it never really liked me."

"Aw," she said again. It was something she had a habit of saying just at the moments when Riku thought an 'aw' was completely inappropriate, too; she thought things were brave and cute and noble when really they were sad and misguided and futile, but she was his employer.

After a few more minutes, and walking around to check on the dogs that were waiting to be picked up after overnight stays in the cages and worrying over a cat that wouldn't stop puking up all the food it ate, Riku shyly tapped Yuna on the shoulder.

She had a bunny in her hands. She was seriously holding a bunny. Honestly. This woman.

"What…would happen to her if I don't take her home?" he asked, worried that this would only be the beginning of the siege of adopted strays.

"Well," Yuna said thoughtfully, waving at the receptionist to let her know she was done and ready for another patient. "Like I said, she'll go to the shelter. I suppose she could luck out and get adopted. Though, honestly, with cats you never know – I mean, we don't know her age, and people don't want to get attached to something that might die in six months. Especially since there's not usually a shortage of kittens."

She was milking it, he knew, but he suspected there was truth in her words. It made sense, anyways. Besides, there was no getting around the fact that the beast was ugly as fuck. She wasn't endearing or endearingly gruff, didn't have a ripped ear from cutesy alley cat tumbles, didn't care for the fluffy pink cat toy in the office, and squirmed awkwardly when she was picked up.

He refilled a water container and looked at her in the cage across the room. She had turned around and was staring at the wall, her fat brown tail still twitching as she licked one paw. The corner of her eye was visible, flicking nervously around as if she feared being interrupted in her activity.

He thought about the cat being put to sleep because nobody wanted her. Sitting down on the floor, he planted his hands on either side of his legs.

"Poor little unwanted kitty," he said sarcastically. And, much more sincerely, "Maybe I'll take you home to the other abandoned things. You can kill birds."

The cat didn't look up or respond. Its ears swiveled in his direction briefly and reverted.

* * *

"Ri-_ku_! She won't eat her food! What do we do if she's one of those feral cats that only eats raw meat?"

Sora had his hands on either side of the cat, holding it rather forcefully in front of the two plastic bowls with food and water. It was makeshift but Riku liked it. The cat, however, was extremely displeased to have its compressed Persian face be smushed into kibble.

A disinterested smirk on his face, he drew the curtains to keep the heat in and made it a point to move his tall rubber boots onto the boot tray to keep from warping the wood with melting snow. "Let the beast go, Sora," he said. Sora had dealt with the advent of the beast quite well. "She's been here for an hour, she doesn't know what's safe to eat, and she's used to other kinds of food. Probably scraps or meat or whatever the lady who found her fed her before. She's not like a dog, she won't just try to eat anything that fits in her mouth."

"Saïx would eat anything if you waved it in front of his face."

"Yeah, well, Saïx was weird."

Kneeling on the floor, Sora kept his hands around the cat and squeezed her a little tighter. "Come on, kitty…" he urged.

"Sora," Riku said, coming to stand next to him. "Let the cat go. She'll figure out it's food when she gets hungry enough."

"Your solution is to _starve_ it? She."

For an odd moment, Riku caught himself up in the debate between calling the cat she and calling the cat it. He put a hand on Sora's shoulder. "Hey, which one of us is the vet's assistant? Today we had a lady come in freaking out because her cat kept puking."

"And?"

"And nothing. She freaked out too much and the thing was fine. It just puked a couple of times and then went back to normal. She hasn't called us or anything so I assume it hasn't started puking again."

There was a long while where Sora didn't say anything, just sat on the kitchen floor, twisting his fingers in the fur of the very confused cat. Where he ran into a thick matted tangle he'd start prying it apart with his fingers. He laughed. "Things take care of themselves, huh?"

Riku nodded at that and sat down next to him, just staring at the cat. He was reluctant to touch her. "Dogs die alone, if they can," he said. "Yuna was telling me about it. If you let him, an old dog will leave the house and go under the porch or into the forest, or even under a bush, and just die real quiet and without any help. No bells. No whistles. He'll just die sleepy and easy."

At that, Sora didn't say a word. He stared at the wall and chewed on the inside of his cheek. And after a while, "My mom had a dog that ran away when it was thirteen years old. It could barely walk but it still ran away and they never found it. Do you think that's what happened?"

Riku nodded again, and reached out to brush the back of his crooked pointer finger against the cat's side. She wasn't very soft. He expected they'd have to cut off all her fur to get most of the mats out.

"Probably," he said. "You'd be surprised how things carry on without our help."

At which Sora slumped against Riku's shoulder and heaved the fat beast onto his lap. The cat crossed her front legs and did nothing else. "Even though you put things to sleep. I can't decide whether or not I like that euphemism."

Putting an arm around Sora's shoulders now, "It's like we think things can't die without our help. There are books about it, you know. About how to die the right way. I saw one in the self-help section walking home."

"That's…kind of really depressing. Besides, isn't death a relative thing or something?"

"We're so not getting into that debate."

The kitchen floor was cold and tiled cheaply, and despite all the snow what he really wanted was to eat some ice cream. His favorite thing was digging out all the chunks of weird stuff like chocolate or nuts. Some part of his mind registered it as a treasure hunt. But Sora had a warm head.

"Why not? It's a valid debate!" There was the barest twinge of annoyance there, at an obstinate kid who argued for the sake of argument. Like a sore muscle in the morning.

"Because I think we _tried_ this before, and anyways, it doesn't have an answer. You just keep going around with the same logic and never coming to any satisfying conclusion."

"_Duh_." Sora frowned and rolled his eyes. "That's the point."

Riku smirked and kissed him on top of his pointy head, which was all there was to be done about Sora Goodwin, really.

* * *

"We _have_ to name her! And it can't be something stupid, either. It can't be an adjective. It has to be a real name."

"Why do we have to name her? Look, she's perfectly happy, sitting on the bed, not having a name."

"You can't miss what you never had."

"I don't see why we can't just call her 'cat'."

"Because that's an awful name! You can't tell people you have a cat named Cat."

"I won't tell people that. If they ask, I'll say, 'I have a cat.' And that'll be fine."

"It's demeaning to the animal world."

"Cats in the animal world do not have names."

"Dolphins do."

"Well, they're not _cats_, are they?"

"We can't just call her _cat_!"

"I'm calling her cat. Do what you want."

"Ri-_ku_!"

"So-_ra_."

* * *

They did end up calling her cat. Sora couldn't decide on a name for too long and Riku was pretty consistent.

He did not mention, of course, how it was thoroughly bad enough that they were two gay guys living in a house with a cat. Because he was worried Sora would just get more.

The cat liked all the places Riku liked, maybe just to annoy him. The chair in front of the window, the left side of the bed, Sora's pillow. Sora. He would lift the thing up bodily and take her place, and if the cat came back, so be it. She was a very good reading cat; she didn't move much and she was warm, and soft once they cut her hair short.

The closest they got to naming her was a derogatory nickname. "Hey, Monstroke, that's my chair. Up we go, girl." Sora had thought that the sperm whale's name in Pinocchio was Monstroke, not Monstro, when he was a little kid. But mostly they just called her cat, and she minded her own business.

Riku forgot she was there sometimes and then he'd wake up and she'd have wormed her way in between him and Sora, right next to their bellies where it was warmest. It took maybe two months to get over the initial fawning until she properly settled in. He never quite stooped to having philosophical conversations with her.

It was all well and cute, really, except for that she was just a cat, and Riku was just a guy with tall rubber boots and a moth fixation and a boyfriend. She couldn't tell him, when he asked the blank space around her, when you'd succeeded at life.

* * *

(That was a thing he was thinking about a lot. About if he was actually like, a grown up? And if he was a grown up, why didn't he feel like one? And if that was how they all felt, when would you ever stop feeling that way and how grown-up feeling was enough?

He didn't know if he had done it right. Sometimes, in his mind, he went back over the steps of his life, one by one, near as he could. He checked to see if he'd missed something. Other nights he gave up on the venture entirely because he couldn't really change it now, could he?

That was how he sometimes felt he went about making decisions: seeing how they worked out for other people. Politics. Books for reading. It was like running a race and you hadn't heard the start signal. He was never trying to win.

So he wanted someone to tell him if he had done it right. Only it seemed like nobody, television and books and actual real people and movies and non-fiction, they couldn't agree. On what made your life good. Everyone said something different, like having lots of sex or being famous or having a white picket fence and a baby and a husband named Tidus or a wife named Yuna or discovering some life-changing thing or going on a grand adventure.

Maybe, for them, it was still Norman Rockwell. Riku imagined that Norman Rockwell, if he had painted two gay men living together, would have given them the quiet wooden house and the cat, and watching really bad chick flicks on Friday nights just because it made him feel a little more human that Sora thought something in the world was just hilariously awful. He never said so, since Sora had probably forgotten about ever saying it as a stupid kid. Since so much sort of a little bit kinda not really changed.

He spent his life worrying about whether or not he was doing the normal thing, and if the normal thing was really the same as what he wanted, and he didn't have to do that with Sora and the days he realized that early in the morning before his boyfriend woke up next to him were the really really really really good ones. The fuzzy satisfied curl over and bury yourself in the smell of fresh dirt and vegetables, grass, walking outside in a place where acid rain hadn't touched.

The tight iron band around his chest wasn't stifled. It was periodically lifted and then placed back, because, he figured, you couldn't have happy without sad. Which wasn't very profound, but he'd never really absorbed it before. But it was never stifled like a sneeze in a church.

It suited him, this way of living. Even if he wasn't a grown-up.)

* * *

The day Sora turned forty-seven years old he didn't say much at dinner, or when they went to bed, or when the dog jumped up and started bothering him to go outside. Riku didn't ask why he was acting so strangely, because Sora had told him a week before that his mother and father had died at ages forty-five and forty-six, respectively.

* * *

"I remembered that as a time when my heart leapt up. I was glad to be on an island where a child would point out a rainbow to a stranger, even though the grown-ups of the island resorted to plastic surgery. Maybe if I read the Romantic poets and worshiped nature and became a vegetarian, my heart would leap up again. Probably not. Not as high up - I was sure of that."  
**- Jule Hecht**, _Do the Windows Open?_

* * *

But when they were still young, and when one of them was still in grad school, and one of them worked for a company to make advertisements and do special effects for movies, they didn't have much in the way of money. It was a miracle finding a house as cheap as theirs, even if it was an understandable miracle because who the hell wanted to live that near a highway. So as much brotherly love as he felt, Sora could only afford to go visit Roxas once every couple of years. Fire insurance wasn't really all that much, after all. Enough for college and a house but not three thousand some-odd miles of separation.

Their third trip back, age twenty-four again (and they'd just left the cat in the house with an automatic feeder and a cat flap because she could take care of herself), found Riku watching the horizon from a plane. It was kind of funny watching Roxas try to interact with him maturely. Hug? Because you're like my brother-in-law, practically? Okay, but I've met you four times in my entire life and you spent most of the first two talking to your brother and ignoring me. Fourth time was the charm, apparently.

It didn't seem fair. Axel was in his late twenties and he seemed to know what he was doing. Maybe because seventeen-year-old Riku had seen the man in his early twenties as an adult back then already; a mindset if you'd never seen him as a kid.

Maybe Axel didn't feel like a grown-up either.

It was this sort of thing that went through his mind way over the ocean, after entertaining thoughts about crashing. And thinking how fast they'd fall and what his thoughts would be. Maybe something noble, he'd hold Sora's hand and say he loved him, that holding hands was a nice way to die and it was a shame they didn't have time to take off their shoes first, but instead he'd probably just be thinking about those things and not doing them. He'd be wondering, in his last moments, what he ought to do with them. What he dwelt more on was the feeling; he wondered if he would become used to the idea in the seconds or minutes it took to reach the ocean, in the minutes it took to drown. Or if he would feel panicked when he died still.

He imagined hurtling downwards, feeling a rush of air like in an elevator, flying without power and always downwards from gas to liquid, from alive to dead. That dichotomy, specifically, seemed foreign to him – you were alive or you were dead and there wasn't an in between. There were in betweens for everything else.

It was these familiar lines of thought that he traveled when he found himself with too much time on his hands.

The strangest thing struck in his mind then, ringing softly in his ears. He hoped, if the plane's engines ruptured or a storm broke off a wing, or if it simply died, that when they went plunging hopelessly into the ocean, he would see a whale. Staring out the window of a sky monster at the shape of some natural sea beast, who, he imagined, would look at them calmly: oh, a fallen plane. Yes, well, that's the order of things, isn't it? Planes from the sky, and whales do not. Oh, turn around little man; I have interest whatsoever in watching you drown.

He liked that thought. Of seeing a whale just before your lungs were filled with water and you died deaf with shoes on. Considered it a decent consolation prize.

That did not, of course, mean he was particularly looking _forward_ to the plummeting downwards bit, but if it had to happen he wanted to see something alive down there to remind him life didn't end with the plane.

Why he was so thoroughly fixated on the idea of a plane crash in the middle of the ocean evaded him, but he attributed it to fatigue.

"Hey," Sora's hand grazed his over their shared armrest.

"Hey," Riku said back. He turned his eyes to look at their fingers.

Sora was in morning mode; his eyes were bleary and his hair was flattened and compressed in most places. And he had his adorable sleepy smile (that Riku ever thought anything was adorable was a secret, of course). "I have a question for you."

"What?"

He blinked and narrowed his eyes. "Dammit," he muttered. "I forgot. It was a really good question."

"That's okay. You'll remember it as soon as you forget you're trying to."

"Yeah, probably. Ugh, I hate that about my brain." He stuck out his lower lip and looked directly upwards as if into his forehead. "I'm sorry, brain. I didn't mean that."

Riku, who was really too tired to find that at all funny, laughed halfheartedly and toed off his shoes. Sora still did that curling up with nothing but socks on his feet thing on airplanes.

Another thing he kept thinking about: and it was sentimental, really, far too sentimental for his own good: silly, even, but it was there and he liked to rethink it when he felt mushy: he still loved Sora because he had not fallen hard and fast, had not _avait le coup de foudre pour_ Sora, but had expanded his world – and Sora had been there waiting on the periphery. He fit in perfectly, naturally, even, not like a moth, alive then dead suddenly and horrible and crushed against the floor, not the sudden dichotomy. Instead, Riku fancied it was like the very old, sick dogs being put to sleep; they died asymptotically, slowly, in a thin fuzzy line. And such was the case for Sora: fuzzy and indistinct, without a moment of sudden heartfelt realization. Snuck in and you were used to it before you realized you couldn't live without it.

He had decided that there's wasn't one of those relationships that died out, that they were not the naïve people who knew nothing about what to do with love besides get married and make babies. Maybe that was naïve of him, too, but he liked to imagine they wouldn't ever get sick of each other, not really. It gave him a happy little jump in his heart when he was feeling introspective and natural and looking at Sora in the right light, Sora who wasn't maybe-gay and who didn't cry every Pi day, who didn't understand the sanctity of moths but who understood fully the beauty of an old dog crawling off to die under a bush in the woods when it knew.

And then Sora said, "Riku?"

"Yeah, Sora?"

He turned his head down to look at their fingers, just barely touching, and their feet; both socked and curled up in opposite directions. Riku's rubber boots on the floor in front of them.

"Do you wanna get married?"

Everyone on the plane was, for the most part, asleep; they were crossing over a time zone. Riku's was the only open window. He didn't much care if that made it hard for other people to sleep.

"I didn't think we could do that. Oh – you mean those domestic partnership things?"

"Yeah. I meant like that. Just…not a wedding or something stupid like that, but like a document. So I own half of you and you own half of me."

Riku thought about it.

"No," he said after a while. "That would be silly."

Sora smiled at him.

A sleepy light blue graphic designer French orphan smile.

"I thought so," he said. "I hoped you'd say that."

Tall-rubber-boots-and-a-lazy-boyfriend.

Riku Tepes was really very human.

* * *

"I'd never thought of that. I forgot that things can get better. I thought things could only get worse."  
**- Julie Hecht**_, Do the Windows Open?_

_

* * *

_

Well, damn.

It's over.

Answer the questions? Leave a review? Up to you, really.


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